Heavy metal helped a new Stranger Things character come to life.

Joe Quinn, who plays the Dungeons & Dragons-loving Eddie Munson on the newly premiered fourth season of the Netflix sci-fi series, tells Entertainment Weekly he credits metal music for helping him get into the right mindset for the role.

“I bought a book to try and understand what Dungeons & Dragons was about, and it didn’t agree with me,” Quinn shares. “Though, I knew that wasn’t going to be my way in, as it were.”

He explains, “I listened to a lot of heavy metal and that was my … God, it’s impossible to not sound pretentious when you say it, but, yeah, that was my way in.”

The character Eddie is also a big metal fan and sports a giant patch on the back of his denim jacket inspired by the cover artwork for the 1984 Dio album The Last in Line. His metal cred even earned the attention of the official Twitter account for the late Ronnie James Dio, which shared a screenshot of Quinn wearing the jacket alongside the caption, “It was great to see this vintage DIO design on the recent episode of @Stranger_Things! Eddie loves DIO!”

The first part of Stranger Things season 4 is streaming now on Netflix. The second part will premiere July 1.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.