‘Stranger Things’ Star Millie Bobby Brown Teases Season 3 Couple

Are two of the closest friends on Stranger Things about to become even closer?

In the second season of Netflix’s supernatural breakout, the core crew known as The Party solidified two new members of the group: video game wizard Max (Sadie Sink) and actual wizard Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). While Eleven earned her stripes in the first season, she finally found some stability by the end of the show’s second year. What’s more, both Eleven and Max found extra companionship in their relationships with Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) — and while they’re the newest “it” couples in Hawkins right now, an even bigger couple might be on the way.

At a Stranger Things FYC event in New York City attended by The Hollywood Reporter, Brown was asked about the future of the series — including whether or not Eleven’s adoptive father, Jim Hopper (David Harbour), might wind up romantically entangled with Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) next season.

“I can’t say anything about this,” said Brown, visibly nervous about saying too much. “This is so bad. Listen, I would love for them to get together. Jopper is like my inspiration in life. I’m shipping them from the ground up.”

For what it’s worth, Brown is far from the only person rooting for “Jopper.” The chemistry between Ryder’s and Harbour’s characters has been palpable since the start of the series, even if supernaturally driven trauma has gotten in the way of any possible romantic connection: the disappearance of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) in season one and the death of Joyce’s boyfriend Bob (Sean Astin) in season two. With a summer-themed third season in the offing, have enough time and dark circumstances passed for Joyce and Hopper’s relationship to hit the next level? At the very least, Hopper’s summer attire is going to make him hard to resist.

Speaking previously with THR, Harbour shared some details about season three, albeit without a word on any possible future romance: “I wish I could characterize the season, but to me it’s so big. For example, did you find last season to be darker? There were certainly elements of it that were scary, but I thought there was also a lot of fun, a lot of joy and a lot of silliness with Steve being a dad and the kids as Ghostbusters. Just taking my story, for example, it’s fun to see Hopper having adopted Eleven. She’s become legitimized in the society, in the world of Hawkins. And he’s a father now. He’s raising a teenage daughter, with all that that entails. So I think that can be pretty funny to see his inadequacies in all of this.”

For her part, speaking at this week’s event, Brown offered up a similar everyday hope for Eleven’s future: “I don’t think she knows how to be a girl. She’s been looking like a boy for a very long time. They thought she was a boy in season one. I mean, some of my friends now are like, ‘The first time I saw you, I thought you were a dude.’ Well, look at me now!”

In terms of Eleven’s role within the show’s mythology — specifically, her telekinetic abilities and her unique relationship with the Upside Down — Brown said she hopes to see some of those powers stripped away in the future.

“I think Eleven should sacrifice herself in some way,” she said. “That’s how I kind of want that situation to go. I want to have her really sacrifice her powers. If Eleven loses her powers, is she as powerful just as a character? I think that would be very cool. I want to build her to be a strong person without her powers. But right now it’s very much about her powers, and I think taking that away slowly could be cool.”

Stranger Things season three debuts in the summer of 2019, with a new setting in tow called Starcourt Mall. New castmembers include Maya Thurman Hawke as an ice cream scooper named Robin and Cary Elwes as slick politician Mayor Klines. Speaking with THR about the new direction of the series, actor Noah Schnapp described season three as “very different” from previous iterations of the show: “It’s great because it has a lot of the dark parts from season two and a lot of the light playful parts from season one.”

Keep checking THR.com/StrangerThings for news, interviews and more.