Stranger Things: Flight of Icarusreveals a lot more backstory for fan-favorite character Eddie Munson.
She eventually got sick and died when Eddie was 6 years old.
Traveling into the depths of hell.
The cover of ‘Stranger Things: Flight of Icarus’.Penguin Random House
My mom’s music was plane tickets.
I guess that makes my music a portal to another dimension."
I see the door.
Joseph Quinn as Eddie Munson on ‘Stranger Things’.Tina Rowden/Netflix
It’s open, just a crack, just far enough for me to peer through.
And inside
The drum kit is the first thing I spot.
Then the rugs laid out on top of one another, stacked high on the floor.
Then the spindly leg of a microphone stand.
Wanting to test this, I tap my fingernail against the hi-hat, and grin at the raspychk-chk-chkthat follows.
I’m in a recording studio.
But this isn’t two-dimensional.
It’s not low-fi.
It’s
“It’s kind of a shithole.”
I look up, startled, to find Paige watching me through the observation window.
She’s standing in the control room, leaning over the audio console.
I lean closer and retry.
This place might be a shithole, sure.
It could be Abbey Road, and I’d be having the same reaction.
I’m standing in a recording studio, like a real honest-to-God rock star.
Did Munson Junior ever think he’d end up here?
She cups her hands over her ears, making big eye contact with me through the window.
I say, remembering to speak into the mic this time.
Paige gestures and covers her ears again, and finally I think to look where she’s pointing.
There’s a set of oversize headphones hanging off the corner of one of the amps.
I hook them up with my fingers and slide them over my head.
“How’s my hair?”
I ask, grinning over the mic.
“What did Nate say?”
“He’s, like, catatonic.
I’m not even gonna try until he’s chugged at least one cup of coffee.”
She cocks her head, nodding toward something behind me.
“You see that guitar over there?”
This baby’s seen some wars.
“What do you think?”
I ask, striking a pose.
“Looks good,” Paige says.
“Even for a shithole?”
“I wasn’t talking about the studio.”
She cocks her head, studying me through the glass.
“You look good.
In there, behind the mic, with a guitar.
I’m not sure I can answer that right away, not without my voice cracking.
“Can I ask you something?”
I miss a note.
“Why music?”
“Everyone likes music.”
“Not everyone likes it the way you do.”
She cocks her head, and her short hair sways sideways in a dark ripple.
“Fine, okay.
Why this music?”
I hit a power chord and let it reverberate, filling every corner of the recording studio.
“Because it’s badass,” I shout over the noise.
“For sure,” she says, once the last echoes have died away.
“But that’s not the only reason, right?”
When I just stare blankly at her, she huffs a sigh.
“Help me out here, Eddie.
If I’m gonna sell this package, I need some copy to write on the side.”
Because, weirdly enough, I’ve never actually asked myself this question before.
For 18 years, music has just kind of… been.
Like eating, breathing, taking a piss… music.
Listening to it, playing it, talking about it.
It’s a fact of life.
“My mom.”
I’m not actually sure I mean to say it.
It just kind of comes out, murmured into the microphone like I’m in a weird rock-and-roll-flavored confessional.
I clear my throat.
“She was living in Memphis when she met my dad.
She’d grown up there, 19 years surrounded by music, everywhere she went.
Country, bluegrass, rock… but her favorite was blues.
Like, Chicago blues, the hard kind that gets into your bones, you know?”
I can’t see her face anymore.
It’s just a silhouette that answers me.
“So when she left, when she moved up to Indiana, she took the music with her.
And then when I was born, she started sharing those records with me.”
“I still have them.
I still listen to them.
They’re stashed next to the TV.
She called them her plane tickets.
It helped her see the world.”
“I didn’t get it, when I was a kid,” I go on.
“All I heard on those records were people singing about sadness, about how shitty life was.
And then, uh.
She got sick and died.
When I was like 6.
I got it then.”
Typically there’s a chorus of sympathetic crooning following that reveal, one that sets my teeth on edge.
But Paige is still and silent inside the control room, watching me.
So I give her something to listen to.
“I like this music because it’s about sadness and how shitty life is.
And things are sad, life is shitty.
But also, it tells stories.
Traveling into the depths of hell.
My mom’s music was plane tickets.
I guess that makes my music a portal to another dimension.”
“You like it because it’s badass,” Paige says.
“I like it because it’s really fucking badass.”
I finish the riff and let my hand fall away.
“Is that enough copy for you?”
Reprinted fromStranger Things: Flight of Icarusby Caitlin Schneiderhan.
Copyright 2023 by Stranger ThingsTM / Netflix.
Published by Random House Worlds, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC.
