Over the years, Stranger Things has introduced younger audiences to the hits of the 1980s, and the latest installment has brought metal legends Metallica back into the limelight.
In the Season 4 finale, Eddie (Joseph Quinn) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) were tasked with playing bait for the demobats in the Upside Down.
To achieve their task, the members of the Hellfire Club chose the most mundane way imaginable, leading to one of the show’s most iconic moments: Eddie standing on the roof of his trailer rocking to Metallica’s “Master of Puppets.”
Fans had seen the clip of Eddie and his guitar in trailers before, leading many to wonder what song he was playing. When Volume 2 dropped and finally played the scene, so did their jaws.
Many praised the character’s guitar skills and talked about how the song was released more than two weeks before the events of the season. Reacting to the commotion, Metallica took to Instagram to praise the scene in a statement.
“The way The Duffer Brothers have incorporated music into Stranger Things has always been next level, so we were beyond psyched for them to not only include “Master of Puppets” in the show, but to have such a pivotal scene built around it,” they wrote.
“We were all stoked to see the final result and when we did 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!! How crazy cool is that?”
“It’s an incredible honor to be such a big part of Eddie’s journey and to once again be keeping company with all of the other amazing artists featured in the show.”
Fans will be even more impressed when they learn that Joseph Quinn really didn’t need anyone to fill in for him during the scene and opted to perform most of the song himself. As a result, they only had one backup guitarist for the solo.
“When I read the scripts, the next morning I went out and bought a guitar and manically started learning “Master of Puppets,” Quinn revealed.
“On the day, me and Gaten just got up on top of the camper van, and just got into it. It was very fun. I played most of it.”
