Eddie Munson reigns as the Dungeon Master of the Hellfire Club in Stranger Things. And while the leader of Hawkins High’s Dungeons & Dragons club knows his way around launching a sadistic campaign, the actor who plays Eddie, Joe Quinn, only recently played the fantasy role-playing game for the first time.
As part of Geeked Week, Quinn and the rest of Stranger Things’ Hellfire Club — Gaten Matarazzo (who plays Dustin Henderson), Finn Wolfhard (who plays Mike Wheeler) and Priah Ferguson (who plays Erica Sinclair) — played their very own game of Dungeons & Dragons to celebrate one of the geekiest pastimes of them all.
“Yeah, never played it,” Quinn recalls of his first foray into D&D, which was hosted by B. Dave Walters.
Each of the actors chose their own character names for the campaign. For instance, Ferguson plucked hers, Lady Applejack, straight from Erica’s go-to in Stranger Things, while Quinn veered slightly more toward reality when it came to picking his alias in the alternate universe of Hawks End. His valiant Tabaxi Gloom Stalker Ranger’s moniker? None other than “Joe Keery.”
“I think we’re all in some way trying to be a little bit more like Joe Keery,” Quinn says of his reasoning behind paying homage to his co-star, who plays Steve Harrington on the show. “So I thought I’d live out a pretty harmless and innocent fantasy of being Joe Keery for, what, three hours? And it was better than I thought it could be.”
While the four heroes faced off against zombies and the horrors of Vecna in their game of D&D, the most surprising moment actually came from history repeating itself.
You might remember that in the first episode of Season 4, “The Hellfire Club,” Ferguson’s Erica joins Hellfire’s final game as a substitute for her older brother Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), who’s busy tossing balls into laundry baskets at the championship basketball game.
And against all odds, Hellfire’s newest addition ends up rolling just the right amount to clinch the victory from the clutches of the cult of Vecna. Well, in this real-life version of gameplay, Ferguson became the team’s MVP once again, rolling a 20 to finally bring the voracious Vecna to his knees.
“That was brilliant. And it was no bullshit. She rolled a 20, which is so funny,” Quinn says of life imitating art in such an uncanny way. “Just like the show.”
The next Hellfire Club game just might have to be — gasp! — postponed, since, after all, Eddie is still the most wanted man in Hawkins at the end of Season 4’s first volume. But Quinn does have a few souvenirs to keep his reign as Dungeon Master close to his heart — he stole a couple of Eddie’s tailored Hellfire Club shirts from set. Which, as Eddie himself would attest, are way cooler than any shirt Mike’s mommy would have bought him from the Gap.
Watch the Hellfire Club’s reunion below.
Geeked Week is a celebration of Netflix's immersive slate of storytelling across sci-fi, fantasy, gaming, anime and more. Check out the full schedule here. For more, follow Netflix Geeked on Twitter.
