Stranger Things Fans Have a Lot of Theories About Who ‘the American’ Could Be

There are spoilers ahead for Stranger Things 3. Consider yourself warned.

The latest season of Stranger Things gave us so many things: an epic makeover sequence at the Starcourt Mall with BFFs Eleven and Max, a new favorite character in Maya Hawke's Robin, an epic showdown with the Mindflayer, and one of the series's most emotionally resonant moments as El reads a letter written by Hopper, who is presumed to be dead after he and Joyce thwarted the Russians' plans and closed the gate to the Upside Down.

And the show also left fans with a post-credits cliffhanger set in Russia that so intense we'll be talking about it until season four arrives. Namely, who is the unseen prisoner the Russians refer to only as "the American"? Whoever the American is, they were spared from being fed to a Demogorgon in favor of a different captive—and it seems likely we'll learn more when the show returns. Naturally, theories about who that prisoner might be are flying all around the internet.

The theories basically fall into two camps. The first group posits that the American is a somehow still-alive Jim Hopper (David Harbour). "So what if hopper never died? bc they never showed the actual dead like they did with billy and alexei also at the end after the credits you can see how the russian guards say 'no, not the american' so maybe the american guy is HOPPER," one fan tweeted.

Reddit user Embattle posted a number of points to the "Hopper is alive" theory, including the fact that Peter Gabriel's cover of David Bowie's "Heroes," which plays as El reads Hopper's letter, was also used in season one when they discovered what was first thought to be Will's body in the lake. Will, of course, turned out to be very much alive—but trapped in the Upside Down.

For his part, Harbour told Entertainment Tonight that even he's not sure of his character's fate. "I have no idea! I mean that, of course, is my hope too," he said when asked about the possibility that Hopper is the prisoner. "It seems pretty crazy though. You know, that machine went off and blew up, and Hopper seemed to be trapped there. He did glance around a little bit, but he seemed to be trapped and the machine exploded. And then you cut to, what was it? It starts with a 'K' or something—some town in Russia, right? Where there’s some American and there's some other prisoner. I don't know, I mean it seems strange. I don't know how though."

The other competing theory is that the American is actually Matthew Modine's Dr. Brenner, aka Papa to Eleven. "I actually think that 'The American' is Dr. Brenner," one Twitter user argued. "We know he's alive and it would explain why the Russians know so much about the upside down."

"I have a feeling the ‘American’ being held in the prison is Brenner! After all, we haven’t seen him since Season 2, and Brenner knows about the ‘Upside Down,’ hence giving the Russians information about Demogorgons and other creatures," another wrote.

Reddit user mart_btar thinks Brenner will actually help Eleven get her powers back in the fourth season. "As for the scene in the credits, I believe the 'American' is in fact Brenner," the Redditor writes. "One of Brenner's associates mentions in Season 2 Ep. 7 'The Lost Sister' that he is still alive, and that he may know where he is. Since Brenner was in some way associated with the development of Eleven's powers, I believe that in Season 4, he'll be able to help (in a good way or a bad way) Eleven get her powers back."

The wait for season four is going to be so hard, isn't it?

Originally Appeared on Glamour