Joe Keery & Maya Hawke React to Seeing Joseph Quinn’s ‘Stranger Things’ Metallica Guitar Solo for the First Time: Watch
Did your jaw drop when you first watched Eddie Munson’s epic guitar solo in the Stranger Things season four finale? So did the Stranger Things cast’s. In a recent interview on the show’s official YouTube channel, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke and the guitar lord himself, Joseph Quinn, were captured as they watched with awe the heavy-metal moment for the first time.
The much talked about scene takes place when the entire cast is working to take down Vecna, this season’s main villain. Eddie and Dustin (played by Gaten Matarazzo) are in charge of distracting Vecna’s guarding fleet of batlike creatures in the Upside Down, which they decide to do by staging a full-blown performance of Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” led by Quinn on electric guitar.
More from Billboard
As the distorted opening riff of “Master of Puppets” plays during the interview, Hawke’s mouth immediately falls open. “Holy s–t!” she gasps, as Keery gives an approving “Oh yeah, buddy.”
Hawke’s incredulous expression stays frozen until the end of the scene, while Quinn grins widely at his favorite parts.
Before that, the 29-year-old actor revealed that he originally had conflicting emotions about the scene when he first read through it in the script. “I was gutted that I was not gonna be able to come back and work with these people again, because we had such a great time,” Quinn explained, acknowledging that Eddie’s big moment comes just before the character dies. “But if there’s a way to go out, it’s a pretty good one.”
“I didn’t think I’d ever be able to fulfill this quite adolescent fantasy of being a rockstar,” he added. “It was great fun, I remember finding it just so fun as a concept. The stakes are so high, and you feel them as an audience member, but to have that absurdity and levity — it makes for great viewing.”
Eddie’s Upside Down concert was undoubtedly one of the most standout moments of season four — and possibly the entire series so far. It even earned praise from the Metallica band members themselves, who wrote on Instagram: “We were totally blown away… it’s so extremely well done, so much so, that some folks were able to guess the song just by seeing a few seconds of Joseph Quinn’s hands in the trailer!”
The Game of Thrones alum also confirmed in the interview that, for the most part, he was actually the one playing guitar throughout the scene. Though the show’s creators brought in a professional to perform the “Master of Puppets” solo, Quinn learned the rest of the track with lots of rehearsal — some of which was filmed and recently shared by the Stranger Things writers on Twitter.
In spite of all the praise and the practice that went into the scene, Quinn revealed that he wasn’t allowed to keep Eddie’s guitar after the season wrapped. “I kind of wanted it at the end — I kind of asked if I could have it, and they ignored me,” he confessed, going on to steal a replica of the guitar on display behind him after the interview concluded.
Watch Joseph Quinn, Joe Keery and Maya Hawke’s jaws drop at Eddie Munson’s rockstar moment in Stranger Things season four below:
