Jim Hopper: The New Eleven // My Stranger Things 4 Theory

My Theory:)

In s3, e8 of Stranger Things, it shows that part of the mind flayer is attached, and inside of Eleven's leg. She gets it out with her well known powers, but seems to be struggling a whole lot. This could be because while the mindflayer was in her leg, it was slowly eating up all of her powers, and when it started to get to the last bit from inside of El, she began to get dizzy, as shown in the end of s3, e7.

When El successfully detaches it from her leg, she throws it across the mall, introducing Hopper to the scene, stepping on, and crushing what had been in El's leg. What if when this occurred, the powers that the mind flayed had stollen from El, transferred to hopper, in result of him making physical contact with it.

Skipping through a bit of stuff from e8, when Hopper was trapped down by the gate, and seemed to "accept death," he most likely jumped into the gate, arriving to the upside down. Like Eleven in s2, Hopper maybe found an open gate while in the upside down, leading to what he thought was freedom, but was really Russia, where he was captured, and put into what we all know as, "the American cell."

The Russians kept him, planning to soon feed him to the demogorgon, like they had done to the prisoner in the credit scene of s3, e8, but saw that one day, Hopper escaped. (The cell, not Russia) As they looked back at the security footage, they saw that he had just stood there, and stared at the door, causing it to open itself. They found this extraordinary, and decided to not kill him, but use him for work. They then tracked him down using the camera footage, put him back in the cell, and when two Russians were walking down the hallway in the credits, the one Russian said, "not the American" because he knew that Jim Hopper was special, and could be used for good work, and experiments, much like the ones done to El. Which could explain why Hoppers head was shaved.
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I hope you all enjoyed this, and I'm so excited that I maybe managed to convince a few people that this is what will occur in s4. Leave some of your feedback in the comments, and.... I hope you have a great day!