David Harbour nearly walked away from Stranger Things when the story ran out

Stranger Things made David Harbour a household name. Chief Jim Hopper, that battered, soft-hearted copper in Hawkins, has been at the centre of Netflix’s sci-fi juggernaut from start to finish—five seasons, proper global obsession, alarms and all. But now, after the show wrapped with its big finale in December 2025, Harbour’s been quite blunt about his readiness to be done with it. Not the usual ‘oh, I’ll miss everyone so much’ platitudes; he’d well and truly had enough.

Harbour Wanted Out – Here’s Why

Harbour sat down with Variety and didn’t mince his words regarding his future with Stranger Things. In his own slightly weary style:

'At a certain point, you kind of run out of story. We had gone as far with these characters as we could, and we were starting to, in a subtle way, repeat beats.'

Which, to be fair, is exactly what it can start to feel like when a long-running show keeps dragging its cast back for another go. Harbour sounds like he’d have vanished at the first sign of Netflix demanding a sixth round in Hawkins. Instead, he moved on—sharpish.

What Harbour’s Been Up To Since

Since hopping off the Stranger Things treadmill, Harbour’s had a couple of interesting gigs pop up. First was a rather oddball HBO mini-series earlier this year called DTF St. Louis. Yes, that’s the actual title, and no, it’s not the romcom you’d expect. Harbour leads as Floyd Smernitch, an American Sign Language interpreter—bit of a pivot from haunted police chief.

• Jason Bateman crops up as Clark
• Linda Cardellini as Carol
• Joy Sunday as Jodie
• Richard Jenkins as Detective Donoghue

Basically, a pretty stacked ensemble for something that weirdly sneaked onto telly without much fanfare.

Next, he’s slipped onto the set of a thriller called Evil Genius, now in production as of November 2025. Courteney Cox is both starring and directing—which is always at least a bit interesting in these actor-helmed jobs. The cast is properly crowded:

Patricia Arquette, Michael Chernus, Gregory Alan Williams, Ryan Eggold, Owen Teague, and Harlow Jane all in the mix. The film’s about the notorious ‘pizza bomber’ case – proper bizarre crime stuff, if you remember that from the news.

Notably, there’s no official word yet on when Evil Genius will make its way onto screens.

Red Guardian’s Return

In case that wasn’t enough, Harbour’s also booked to appear later this year as Alexei Shostakov—better known to Marvel fans as Red Guardian—in the next Majors-vs-Minors blowout, Avengers: Doomsday. Because Marvel will absolutely keep dusting off almost any character for as long as we keep watching.