The actress is hoping for Robin's "hero’s moment" in the sci-fi series' fifth and final season.
Maya Hawke is really hoping to send Robin off in a blaze of glory. The Stranger Things actress reveals that she would "love" to see her beloved character die in the show's upcoming fifth and final season, but that she'd also settle for a lighthearted spinoff with Joe Keery.
"It's the last season, so people are probably going to die," she tells Rolling Stone of the Duffer Brothers' sci-fi drama on Netflix. "I would love to die and get my hero's moment. I'd love to die with honor, as any actor would."
Hawke responds to co-star Millie Bobby Brown's recent quip that the showrunners need to start killing off more characters because the cast is so large, they can't fit in a photo together.
"I love the way that the Duffer Brothers love their actors," Hawke replied. "The reason that they write so beautifully for me and for everyone else is because they fall in love with their actors and their characters, and they don't want to kill them. I think that's a beautiful quality that they have, and I wouldn't wish that away."
To wit: the Duffer Brothers have previously stated that fan favorite Steve, played by Joe Keery, was originally supposed to die in the show's first season. Ultimately, they loved Keery's performance so much that they decided to keep his character around.
"You’re learning what works and what doesn’t work," Matt Duffer said on a panel at Netflix's Geeked Week earlier this year. "The cast is impacting where you take the narrative, the other writers and directors…it’s this living thing."
In recent seasons, Robin and Steve have formed a dynamic friendship and brought levity to the show's heavy subject matter. If both survive the series finale, Hawke jokes that she'd love to follow their characters to New York City in the '90s.
"We're just partying in the clubs and figuring our s**t out," she cracks. "Normally I wouldn't really be a proponent of a spinoff, but if I got to do it with Joe Keery, I would do anything. He's so funny and wonderful and smart, and he's got great boundaries. He's an excellent coworker and I would do anything with him."
Hawke, the daughter of actors Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, also addresses whether she's "shipping" Steve and Nancy.
"I think that Robin’s definitely shipping Steve and Nancy. I think that Robin definitely wants whatever would make Steve the happiest, which appears to certainly be Nancy," she says. "I personally think that the thing that’s so beautiful about the show: it actually has never really been about romance. People are always shipping characters in that show, but really that show’s about friendship."
Hawke continues, "There’s such an over-emphasis in media that we consume about romantic love, and it being the ultimate destination that we’re all supposed to arrive at. Find this one perfect person and then everything’s good and the story’s over. Part of me would ship it way more if the story wasn’t ending, but there’s something about our female heroes always getting endings — which is them finding the right guy — that I’m super over."
The 24-year-old actress was speaking to Rolling Stone while promoting her new new musical venture. Hawke will release a folk album called Moss on Sept. 23. She recorded the album at Long Pond Studio -- the same place Taylor Swift created Folklore.
"I was a huge fan of Folklore and Evermore, especially 'Cowboy Like Me,' which is not one of the singles. It’s my favorite track on both of those records," she says. "That was where I was like, 'Whoever mixed this song, I want to have mix my music.' It was a slow song, but it still had this drive forward, and that’s the feeling that I wanted."
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