Jason Carver

**This article or section needs to be updated.**Info from *Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus* needs to be added.

## Biographical information

### Other relations

Chrissy Cunningham † (girlfriend)
Andy (friend/teammate)
Chance (friend/teammate)
Patrick McKinney † (friend/teammate)
Eddie Munson † (rival/enemy)
Lucas Sinclair (former friend; teammate/enemy)
Erica Sinclair (enemy)
Nancy Wheeler (enemy)

### Occupation

Student at Hawkins High School (1982-1986)
Captain of the Hawkins High Basketball Team (1985-1986)

## Portrayal

### Episodes

**Jason Carver**, portrayed by Mason Dye, was a recurring antagonist in the fourth season of *Stranger Things*.

Jason was an student athlete from a wealthy family; he was captain of the Hawkins High Basketball Team, and dating Chrissy Cunningham, the school's lead cheerleader. After Chrissy's death in the Munson trailer, Jason became convinced that Eddie Munson was her killer, and that his mind had been warped by the apparently "satanic" games he played. Jason started to hunt Eddie down with the help of his teammates, and later called on the townsfolk of Hawkins to join him in his search during a town hall meeting.

His search led him to the Creel House, where inside the attic, he encountered Max Mayfield in a mysterious trance, and entered a fistfight with his teammate Lucas Sinclair. Lucas managed to incapacitate Jason; moments later, an interdimensional gate opened in the attic floor, ripping through Jason's body and killing him instantly.

## History

### Background

Jason was born in either 1967 or 1968, and was from a wealthy family. He became a player for Hawkins High's basketball team, befriending teammates Patrick McKinney, Andy, Lucas Sinclair, and Chance in the process.

By March 1986, Jason had started dating Chrissy Cunningham, a cheerleader. He also grew to dislike Eddie Munson and the *Dungeons & Dragons*-centered Hellfire Club, viewing them with suspicion after hearing stories about *D&D* being connected to Satanic cults and rituals.

### 1986

On March 21, during the afternoon, Jason delivered a speech to his fellow students in the high school gymnasium, trying to whip up excitement for the championship basketball game later that night. He thanked the Hawkins High students for their support and professed his love for his girlfriend. He paid tribute to various students who had died in recent years, including Billy Hargrove and Heather Holloway, and claimed they would have wanted Hawkins to win the championship, which annoyed Mike Wheeler and his friends.

That evening, the Hawkins Tigers won their game against the Falcons, thanks to a last-minute basket by freshman player Lucas Sinclair, much to Jason’s elation. After the game, Jason checked on Chrissy, who said she was going home to get changed. Jason and his friends went to the abandoned Benny's Burgers restaurant to celebrate the victory and drink. That evening, Chrissy was murdered by Vecna in Eddie Munson's trailer.

The next morning, Jason checked on a hung-over Lucas before grabbing some cereal. He approached his friends, asking why they were watching the news instead of *Thunder Cats*. Patrick and Andy informed him a Hawkins High student had been murdered, much to Jason’s surprise. Moments later, the group were interrupted by Chief Calvin Powell, who asked to talk with Jason. Powell questioned him about Chrissy's whereabouts the day before, inadvertently hinting that Chrissy was the one who had died, and that she had been at Eddie's trailer. Heartbroken and guilt-ridden, Jason stormed off and had a minor meltdown in the woods, before resolving to avenge Chrissy.

Later that day, Jason talked to his friends and teammates, and concluded that Eddie was somehow involved in Chrissy's death, or had killed her. He speculated that members of Eddie's *DnD* club, the Hellfire Club, might have had a role to play, or could even be "a cult".

On March 23, Jason, Patrick and Andy set out to hunt for Eddie. He told Lucas he could go home and they’d still accept him but Lucas decided to join. The gang left, first visiting Eddie's band, Corroded Coffin. When the band members couldn't tell him anything, Jason beat up Gareth and Lucas watched from the side-lines in horror. When Lucas heard that they were planning on targeting Dustin next, he decided to mislead them and lead them to Hopper's cabin before leaving them and running.

The next day, after being lead to a dead end by Lucas, Jason visited the Sinclair household and found Lucas's sister Erica Sinclair instead. He tried in vain to get answers from her, but Erica gave him nothing. Realizing Lucas had deceived him and his friends, Jason got into his car and drove off with Andy and Patrick.

On March 25, Jason and his friends attended Chrissy's funeral. Afterward, Jason found more pictures of the Hellfire Club and discovered Lucas to be a member of the club before showing them to his teammates. One of his friends suggested they look for Eddie at Reefer Rick's house, and Jason and the basketball team set out for Lover's Lake.

There, Jason and Patrick found Eddie rowing silently out onto the lake, and the boys swam after him. However, just as they neared the boat, Vecna struck again and killed Patrick, first dragging him under the surface and then into the air. Eddie managed to escape during the distraction while Jason looked on in horror.

Believing that Eddie had used satanic powers to kill Patrick and escape, Jason was upset that the cops didn't believe him.

On March 26, during a Town Hall meeting, he interrupted the police officers who were giving an update on the killings, and spoke before the crowd of citizens, claiming that satanic forces were at work in Hawkins, spurred by Hellfire Club. He urged them to take matters into their own hands and hunt Eddie, who was the head of the "cult" as he called it. Jason successfully convinced them, and people left the meeting angry and ready to fight.

On March 27, Jason and his friends visited the War Zone store to purchase guns and other weapons as they became more bent on finding and killing Eddie. While he was there, Jason ran into Nancy as she was purchasing a gun. Remembering that her brother was involved in Hellfire, Jason cornered her and asked her about Mike and his friends, pointing out that they were in the same club as Eddie. Nancy refused to answer him, raising his suspicion.

Later that night, Jason was practicing with his new gun when he received word of something suspicious occurring at the Creel House. On high alert, he went to investigate with Andy. At the Creel House, he found Lucas and Max Mayfield in the attic, the latter in the middle of a trance while sitting on the floor. Jason immediately believed that Lucas had put Max in this trance, and refused to listen to him when the boy desperately tried to explain their plan, ordering him to wake Max up to save her. While initially willing to listen, Jason threatened him with his gun after he told him Chrissy went to Eddie to buy drugs and demanded that he wake Max up. Jason began counting to five. It ended when Lucas attacked him, having no other option, and the boys fought each other, Jason unknowingly crushing Max's headphones during the scuffle. Gaining the upper hand, he pinned Lucas against a wall, beat him, and choked him. But then he was smashed into a window and knocked out by Lucas in a fit of rage.

When Max's heart stopped and completed Vecna's plot, a massive surge of energy manifested, and a crack between the real world and the Upside Down formed, snaking across the attic floor and leaking vines. Coming to, Jason found himself trapped when the vines grabbed him and the energy disintegrated his mid-section. Despite their animosity, Lucas looked on in horror and regret as Jason died.

#### Legacy

Later, townsfolk were seen spray painting Jason's recited Bible quotes onto the church to encourage the community, suggesting that Jason inspired the town even after his death.

## Personality

Jason started off as a fairly reasonable boy. He showed affection towards his girlfriend, Chrissy, and checked on Lucas when he had his first hangover. He was shown to have care for his basketball teammates, standing up for them when the opposing basketball team violently assaulted one of them. He held a deep love for his school and town. Jason was shown to accept African-American teammates like Patrick and Lucas, showing he lacked the racism previously seen by antagonistic bullies like Troy Walsh and Billy. He was also very good at public speaking, making a speech about all of the tragedies the town of Hawkins had endured in the past couple of years, and telling his audience to use their trauma and Chief Hopper's apparent heroic sacrifice as inspiration.

However, Jason also revealed revealed himself to be quick-tempered, self-centered, self-righteous, irrational, ill-informed, paranoid, accusatory, aggressive, elitist and foolhardy. He was easily riled by Eddie Munson’s taunts and showed a dislike towards those more unpopular than he, labeling them as "freaks". Jason accepted the incorrect idea that the killing of Chrissy, and the subsequent deaths, were satanic in nature and cult-related.

Despite his love for Chrissy, Jason never noticed she was suffering from depression and stubbornly insisted she would never buy drugs while believing if she needed help, she, in his words, would have gone to him rather than to anyone else.

After the death of his girlfriend, Jason's personality changed drastically and set him on a dark path. Jason became bent on avenging Chrissy, and wrongly concluded that Eddie was responsible for her death as she was in his home at the time of her murder. Although part of Jason's motivation out of hunting Eddie was concern he would kill again and thus, he desired to protect his town from future murders. He took drastic measures to find Eddie, such as beating up a member of Eddie's band in order to find his location. Jason told Lucas he didn't have to join the team in the hunt for Eddie, but hinted that it was the right thing to do. Even after Jason witnessed his friend Patrick McKinney being brutally murdered by Vecna, he still believed Eddie was somehow responsible, having summoned Satan or channeled his power. Jason was heartbroken by Patrick's death, showing he still cared for his friends, and carried his friend's corpse back to shore.

In the end, Jason exemplified the worst aspects of the real-world Satanic panic: he was warped by close personal grief and took a personal crusade against anyone he believed to be associated with the Hellfire Club. Notably, despite his genuine desire to save Max, his respect and friendship for his fellow teammate, Lucas, was nonexistent, even when Lucas pleaded with Jason to listen to reason as he tried to explain the real cause of Chrissy's and Patrick's deaths. In the end, Jason lost every aspects of his sanity and sought to kill Lucas and save Max, refusing to listen to reason or accept he was wrong about his beliefs, which led Jason to his own demise and Hawkins' near destruction because of his foolish actions.

## Relationships

### Non-Familial

**Chrissy Cunningham**

Jason's relationship with Chrissy was only initially believed to be healthy and loving. However, he may not have known her as well as he would have liked to believe. While she reciprocated Jason's declaration of his feelings at the pep rally and Jason acknowledged her affectionately during the basketball game, the two did not share any on screen interaction beyond that; in fact, they appeared quite distant from one another. It is revealed that Chrissy never mentioned her troubled home life and inner struggles to Jason, thinking he would never understand her. Because Jason and Chrissy were the basketball and cheerleading captains, it is implied that their relationship was a case of forced conforming, as society expected them to be a couple. Despite appearances, they didn’t truly know each other as well as they each believed.

After Jason and his team won the championship game, they celebrated on their own at the abandoned Benny's Burgers restaurant. While Jason believed that Chrissy went home after the game, in reality she went home with Eddie Munson to buy drugs that would help her cope with her trauma. This said trauma unfortunately led to Chrissy being killed by Vecna, leaving Jason devastated and desperate to avenge her death. While ignorant of Chrissy’s trauma and personal struggles during her life, Jason’s guilt, grief, and anger over her death sent him spiraling, and he believed that Eddie had killed Chrissy in a satanic sacrifice. In the end, Jason's grief over Chrissy's death led him to become incredibly deranged where he refused to believe or accept that his girlfriend had struggles, thinking Chrissy would only turn to him for help rather than anyone else, leading Jason to eventually be killed.

**Eddie Munson**

Jason despised Eddie, being easily irritated by his disruptive antics and labeling him a freak on multiple occasions. The two appeared hostile towards each other even prior to Chrissy's death, as seen when Eddie jumped on the lunch table and called the basketball team out. Jason angrily responded by calling Eddie a prick. After the death of Jason's girlfriend, Chrissy, he blamed the murder on Eddie, thinking that his involvement with the Hellfire Club had lead to the death of Chrissy. Upon witnessing Patrick's death while swimming after Eddie's boat, he continued his crusade against the Eddie and the Hellfire Club. His hunt for Eddie eventually led Jason to grow incredibly insane where even when Lucas revealed to him that Eddie was in fact innocent of Chrissy and Patrick's deaths, he refused to believe Eddie's innocence.

**Andy**

Andy is one Jason's teammates and a close friend of his. Andy joins the hunt for Lucas, Max and Erica.

**Patrick McKinney**

Patrick was not only one of Jason’s teammates, but one of his best friends. Jason was horrified by Patrick's death and took his body back to the shore in grief. Witnessing Patrick’s death seemed to be the catalyst which caused Jason to truly believe Eddie had occult powers and transform his vigilante posse into an angry mob at the town meeting to catch Eddie and avenge Patrick.

**Lucas Sinclair**

Jason praised Lucas for doing well at the basketball game and helping them win. When Lucas was experiencing his first hangover, Jason checked on him to see if he was okay. When the team formed a vigilante posse with the intent to hunt down Eddie, Jason told him he was not obligated have to join in their search. Upon realizing Lucas was in fact aiding and abetting Eddie, Jason appeared to feel angry and betrayed.

When confronting Lucas in the Creel House and believing he was about to kill Max, Jason pulled a gun on him. Lucas obeyed his demands and began to explain to Jason that Eddie was not Chrissy and Patrick's killer, but rather Vecna was. Yet, as Lucas told him Chrissy was going to buy drugs to help with her issues, Jason accused him of lying and believed that if Chrissy needed help, she, in his words, would have gone to him. Seeing how deranged Jason has become, Lucas sadly stated how he thought he wanted to be like Jason, but upon seeing his preppy and cruel nature, Lucas called him a "raging psychopath". Lucas and Jason fought where Jason got the upper hand until Lucas was able to knock out Jason when he saw Max levitating into the air. Despite their hatred of each other, Lucas showed sadness at Jason's death when he was killed by a gate opening.

## Behind the scenes

His character was first revealed on November 20, 2020, via the show's official social media accounts along with several other new characters.

## Trivia

* In spite of their past animosity, Mason Dye opined that Jason may have been convinced of Eddie's innocence had he not also been present for the death of Patrick McKinney. As it stands, Dye feels that Patrick's death was the moment Jason convinced himself Eddie possessed abilities courtesy of the occult - though Jason may know the theory isn’t rational, it is the only way for him to make sense of what he witnessed.
* While Jason mistakenly believed Eddie to be a cult leader thanks to the Satanic panic, Mason Dye pointed out that, ironically, Jason is the far more cult leader-like figure.
* Prior to filming, the Duffers instructed Dye to emulate Tom Cruise, the popular movie star renown both for his charisma and his controversial ties to the Church of Scientology.
	+ The Duffers' directions may have been inspired by the 2000 adaption of *American Psycho*, in which Christian Bale famously modelled himself on Cruise to depict the psychopathic Patrick Bateman.
	+ Mason also took influence from videos of evangelical preachers.
* The dynamic between Jason and Eddie is possibly inspired by Anthony Michael Hall’s character in the 1990 film *Edward Scissorhands*, one of the breakout films of Stranger Things star Winona Ryder. In the film, Hall’s character of “Jim” is the boyfriend of Ryder’s character “Kim”, and perceives the titular character as a “freak” - similar to Jason’s perception of Eddie. Like Jason does with Eddie, Jim comes to believe Edward intentionally hurt Kim and leads an angry mob against him - resulting in his own death during the final confrontation.
* When asked at the 2022 Montreal Comic Convention if they thought Chrissy and Jason truly loved each other, Grace Van Dien and Mason Dye expressed the belief that while they did care for each other and were each other’s high school sweethearts, it was not unlikely that Chrissy could have been swayed by Eddie, as the Chrissy that Jason loved was his own incomplete perception of her. In the same response, Dye stated his personal opinion that Chrissy deserved better than Jason. Van Dien later remarked at Galaxy Con Raleigh 2022 that had Chrissy lived she likely would have left Jason for Eddie by the second episode of the season.
* Surprisingly, despite the conflict between their two characters, Caleb McLaughlin has repeatedly defended Jason, especially when comparing him to the previous season's antagonist, Billy. Caleb said he feels as though Jason was a “good person in a tough situation” and “misunderstood”, saying he felt Jason genuinely took Lucas under his wing and was showing him the ropes, not holding any racial prejudice towards him. In contrast, Caleb is upset that Billy is loved more than Jason, arguing too many people forgive the blatant racism of Billy’s character, and that he hated Lucas because of the color of his skin.
* When discussing Jason, the Duffers admitted they found him interesting compared to Billy and Troy Walsh, in that instead of him being a typical bully, he was a person who would’ve “lived a good life if not for the death of his girlfriend” and while self-righteous and always having some level of violence hidden in him, never would’ve “unlocked it” and turned villainous if it weren’t for his girlfriends tragic murder.
* "The Massacre at Hawkins Lab" is the only episode of the fourth season that Jason does not appear in.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 https://twitter.com/Stranger\_Things/status/1329818167548506112
2. ↑ https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTReuo8X2/?k=1
3. ↑ American Psycho (film) on *Wikipedia*
4. ↑ Mason Dye & Grace Van Dien Q&A (MTL Comic-Con 2022)
5. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6-GjNGmVWY
6. ↑ https://www.tiktok.com/@anazurmom2/video/7127740941099699498?is\_from\_webapp=1&sender\_device=pc&web\_id=7130499414867674666