The 'Stranger Things' makeup department 'had no idea' Eddie Munson would play Metallica when they gave him a puppet-master tattoo
- Insider recently spoke with "Stranger Things" lead makeup artist Amy L. Forsythe.
- The Emmy-nominated artist revealed she had no idea Eddie Munson would play "Master of Puppets."
When the "Stranger Things" makeup department first created Eddie Munson's signature metalhead look, they didn't realize just how in tune they were with the character.
"A lot of what we do in character design is all about details — whether you see them or not," lead makeup artist Amy L. Forsythe told Insider in an interview. "Eddie is scripted as having tattoos, but we didn't know if we'd ever see them because he's wearing that coat."
"So we thought: what would someone who we know back then have that you might never see in school, but then you meet this person three years later and you see their tattoos finally?" she said.
In doing so, she and her team — who are now nominated for multiple Emmy awards — picked designs for Munson's ink that weren't necessarily made to be seen, or work as foreshadowing.
"The puppet-master tattoo was a nod to Vecna — how he controls people and pulls them up from the ground," she said of Munson's inner forearm tattoo. "I had no idea 'Master of Puppets' was going to be played."
The character performs the Metallica hit during a pivotal scene in the show's season finale as a way to help distract vicious demobats and defeat Vecna.
Similarly, Munson's bat tattoos weren't originally designed as a nod to his cause of death. Instead, Forsythe said they were partly inspired by Steve Harrington's fight with demobats.
"The bats definitely were pulled from 1. heavy metal, and 2. knowing subconsciously that Steve would be getting in this bat fight," Forsythe told Insider.
"I didn't know what a demobat looked like yet, and I was going back and forth with my tattoo artist because we needed some filler, just a splash of something," she added. "And I was like, 'What about bats? Five or six of them, and make them look like the ink is dropping out a little bit.'"
The latter tattoos have become especially popular among fans, with some even getting the design permanently inked on their own skin.
"As a heavily-tattooed person, it's wild to see," Forsythe said. "I knew people were going to resonate with the Eddie character. But seeing people go to the next level and get his tattoos, make fan art, and use that as inspiration to create full sleeves of 'Stranger Things' — it's just really fun."