Stranger Things is coming to an end, with its fifth and final season expected to tie up the loose ends surrounding Hawkins, the Upside Down, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). But there’s one storyline that may remain unresolved: the fate of the Byers family dog, Chester.
The pooch appeared frequently when the show first premiered but suddenly disappeared after the Season 1 finale. So, what happened to Chester and where is the shaggy dog now that Stranger Things is approaching its conclusion?
Where is the Byers Family’s Dog in Stranger Things?
Chester was last seen sneaking food off the counter during the Byers family’s Christmas Eve dinner in the Stranger Things Season 1 finale.
Since then, the pup has never appeared in the series and there’s not even a mention of him. While Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers, revealed during Stranger Con Chicago in 2019 that the dog had died sometime after the first season, executive producer Shawn Levy has finally set the record straight about Chester.
“But somewhere, that dog has an untold story,” he told ScreenRant. “People talk about justice for Barb, justice for Eddie. How about justice for the Season 1 dog?”
Levy admitted that Chester’s disappearance remains one of the biggest “dangling chads” in the series for him, saying he doesn’t know whether “the Demogorgon ate him” or if the Byers simply left the pet behind while fighting in the Upside Down, leaving him “forgotten and [having] died of malnutrition.”
Will Stranger Things Season 5 Address Chester’s Disappearance?
As it now appears that Chester is indeed dead, there are several possible ways the dog may have died, including the likelihood that he was killed by a Demogorgon.
These monsters are no strangers to attacking animals; Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) even came across a half-dead deer in the woods after it had been mauled by one.
Off screen, the more practical reason Chester never returned to the series may be tied to David Harbour’s bad experience with the dog who played Chester, a pup named Cruiser. The 50-year-old actor revealed he had such a difficult time working with Cruiser that he suffered an on-set meltdown.
“The dog was the worst on the set,” he said on The Howard Stern Wrap-Up Show. “There was a day with this dog that was the worst actor I've ever worked with in my life… The dog was just being a jerk. I walked off set—I’ve never done that before. There’s footage of me throwing a fit, going, ‘I’m gonna be in my trailer!’ and just storming off. Because the damn dog wouldn’t do what it was supposed to do. It was just supposed to bark at a thing… And there was a trainer off camera yelling, ‘C’mon, we gotta make our money, this is how we make our money!’ And I was like, ‘This is weird.’”
By the looks of it, Chester disappearance will never be addressed in Stranger Things Season 5.
Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 1 (Episodes 1-4) premieres on November 26, followed by Volume 2 (Episodes 5-7) on December 25 and Volume 3 (Episode 8) on December 31.
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