Benny Hammond: the owner of Benny's Burgers, the show's first death
Characters · Season 1 · Benny Hammond
Benny appears alive in only one episode, and his death steers the whole first season. In this article: the man and his restaurant, the scene of the stolen fries and the meal offered, the call to social services that condemns him, the gunshot arranged as a suicide, the thread Hopper pulls from this corpse, what the character says about the town, and what the building becomes three years later.
Benny Hammond runs a roadside restaurant at the edge of Hawkins. He feeds a child come out of the woods, calls social services, and he is shot that same evening: he is the first named character the show kills. Here is who Benny is in Stranger Things, what happens exactly at his counter on November 7, 1983, and what his restaurant becomes afterward.
The essentials
- Name: Benny Hammond, propriétaire et cuisinier du Benny's Burgers
- Played by: Chris Sullivan
- Appearance: Season 1, episode 1, "The Vanishing of Will Byers"
- The restaurant: 4819 Randolph Lane, held by the Hammond family since 1956
- Meeting with Eleven: November 7, 1983, the day after Will's disappearance
- His death: Abattu par l'agent Connie Frazier, venue se faire passer pour une assistante sociale
- Body found: the morning of November 8, 1983, the scene arranged as a suicide
- The real set: Tiffany's Kitchen, in Lithia Springs, in Georgia
Contents
- Who Benny is in Stranger Things: a man, a counter, a road
- The meeting with Eleven: stolen fries, a meal offered
- Benny's death: a gunshot arranged as a suicide
- What his death sets off: the first thread Hopper pulls
- The first adult who helps without understanding anything
- Benny's Burgers since: an empty building, a very real set
Who Benny is in Stranger Things: a man, a counter, a road
Benny Hammond runs Benny's Burgers, a roadside restaurant set at 4819 Randolph Lane, at the edge of town. The establishment has belonged to his family since 1956, and he is both the owner and the cook. The show presents him in an apron, between the griddle and the pass.
The set holds in three shots: a gravel parking lot, a sign at the side of the highway, a dining room with booths and a counter. At the counter a regular is having lunch, Earl, played by David Dwyer, who will come back in the next episode to testify in front of the police.
Benny is played by Chris Sullivan, an American actor born in 1980, whom the wide public discovered afterward in This Is Us, where he holds the role of Toby, and in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. He plays only a handful of minutes here, and yet he carries the first impression the story gives of the town's adults.
The character has neither a family on screen, nor a plot of his own, nor a line that stayed famous. He has a restaurant, a fryer, and a wall phone. These three elements are enough to set off the story's first death.
The Benny's Burgers T-shirt, the sign of Eleven's first meal.
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The meeting with Eleven: stolen fries, a meal offered
On November 7, 1983, the day after Will Byers's disappearance, a child comes out of the woods and enters the dining room. Shaved skull, bare feet, hospital gown. She steals fries, gets caught, and Benny catches her. Earl, seated there, takes her for a boy because of the cut hair: the detail will matter from the next day.
Benny does not put her out. He understands that she is hungry, goes back behind his counter, and makes her a hamburger with fries. She eats without a word, very fast, like someone who is not sure she will be allowed to finish. He then gives her a restaurant T-shirt, far too big, so she can leave her gown.
He tries to talk to her; she barely answers. On her forearm, he spots three tattooed digits: 011. She then gives him her name, Eleven. The first adult to hear it is neither a scientist nor a police officer: it is a cook who understands nothing of what has just been said to him.
He draws from it the only conclusion a normal adult could draw. This little girl has been abused, she escaped from somewhere, social services have to be alerted. He picks up the wall phone and calls. It is that call, and nothing else, that kills him.
Benny's death: a gunshot arranged as a suicide
That same evening, a woman presents herself at the restaurant. She says she comes from social services, shows herself warm, talks to Benny the way you talk to a man who has just done the right thing. Her name is Connie Frazier, she is played by Catherine Dyer, and she works for the national laboratory set at the edge of town.
She shoots him. The men with her search the dining room and the kitchen while Eleven flees out the back, toward the woods where Mike, Dustin, and Lucas will find her that same night. Before leaving, the agents arrange the scene so it looks like a suicide.
The story shows no creature here. No black corridor, no rumble, no door between two worlds: a woman in a suit, a weapon, and a corpse in an empty dining room. Even before the Demogorgon is named, the show has pointed to what frightens most in this town: people in suits, with badges and unmarked cars.
The death is clean and quick. No effect, no pressed music, no time left for the character to understand. Benny dies believing he did the right thing. Here is how these three days follow one another at the side of the highway.
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November 6, 1983 The laboratory loses its subject
The night Will Byers disappears, a child escapes the national laboratory and reaches the woods. Nobody in town knows she exists.
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November 7, noon Fries stolen at the counter
A child in a hospital gown enters the dining room and steals fries. Earl, seated there, takes her for a boy.
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The afternoon A hamburger and a T-shirt
Benny feeds her instead of putting her out, then gives her a restaurant T-shirt to replace the gown. She eats without speaking.
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The tattoo Three digits on the forearm
Benny spots the tattooed 011 and gets a name: Eleven. He understands neither what the number designates, nor where the child comes from.
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The call Benny alerts social services
Convinced he is dealing with an abused child, he telephones so that someone will come take her into care. It is the normal procedure.
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The evening The fake social worker
Agent Connie Frazier presents herself in the name of social services. Benny receives her as an ally and talks to her without mistrust.
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The gunshot Benny shot in his dining room
Frazier shoots. Her men search the restaurant, Eleven flees out the back, and the scene is arranged to look like a suicide.
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November 8, 1983 The body and the accepted version
The police discovers the body in the morning. The file concludes it was suicide; Hopper, who knew the man, does not believe it for a second.
What his death sets off: the first thread Hopper pulls
The next morning, the police finds the body. The file concludes it was suicide, and Jim Hopper, the police chief, refuses that reading: he knew Benny, and nothing he knows of the man fits the scene presented to him.
Earl is heard. He tells Hopper that the only abnormal thing from the day before is this child with a shaved skull who was stealing food, and that his friend's death makes no sense. Hopper keeps "a boy," thinks of Will Byers, and launches a search in the woods behind the restaurant.
The search does not find Will. It finds a scrap of hospital gown in a drain pipe. The men follow the conduit up to a fence, and that fence is the national laboratory's. In two episodes, a restaurant owner's death has led the police to the fence of the facility that had him killed.
The cruelest detail sits in that testimony. Earl did see a child with a shaved skull stealing food; he was only wrong about the sex. This one-second error sends a whole town looking for a boy in the woods while a girl sleeps there.
The roadside-restaurant poster, sign lit on the gravel.
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The first adult who helps without understanding anything
Hawkins is a town where the institutions protect nobody, and the story establishes it from its first episode, through Benny. The man does exactly what is expected of a responsible adult: he feeds a child in distress, then he calls the agency charged with looking after her. The correct gesture is precisely the one that condemns him.
The contrast with the season's other adults is clear. Joyce Byers believes before everyone else, and the town takes her for a madwoman. Hopper ends up believing, but he needs proof. Benny, for his part, believes nothing at all: he sees a hungry kid and he makes her something to eat. It is the season's only entirely disinterested help, because it rests on no understanding.
The character installs a rule the story will never leave: the people who help Eleven pay. Benny dies the same day. Bob Newby will die a year later in the laboratory hall, after restoring the power for the others. Hopper will be given up for dead under the Starcourt Mall.
He also gives Eleven her first picture of the outside. Before him, she has known only a cell, white corridors, and a man in a coat. At his place, in one afternoon, she learns that an adult can give without asking anything, then that an adult can be killed for that. The two lessons arrive in the same scene.
The holes the screen leaves remain: no funeral, no relative, no one to take over. The town keeps the suicide version, Eleven never speaks of him again, and Barbara Holland, the next victim, will get a watchword and a funeral that Benny will not have. These blanks are not oversights: a man who dies for having done the right thing, without anyone learning it, says better than any line what the laboratory costs the town.
Benny's Burgers since: an empty building, a very real set
The restaurant does not reopen. Without an owner, the establishment closes and falls apart. The story leaves it at the side of its road, shutters closed, for two whole seasons.
The building comes back in March 1986. Abandoned, it serves as a hideout for the Tigers, the high school basketball team. On March 21, after winning the championship, Jason Carver and his teammates spend the night there drinking. The next morning, Lucas Sinclair wakes up there with a hangover, and that is where Patrick McKinney announces to the team that a high school girl has just been killed in the night.
The irony is calculated. The place where an adult had fed a lost child becomes, three years later, the set where teenagers learn that the most murderous season has just begun. No line underlines the link: the place is simply made recognizable.
Outside the fiction, the restaurant exists. The set is Tiffany's Kitchen, a real establishment in Lithia Springs, west of Atlanta, in Georgia, at 7413 Lee Road. The crew shot there in the fall of 2015, during the making of the first season.
The house serves Southern cooking and still runs like any neighborhood restaurant. Visitors can sit at the table where the scene was shot, which makes it one of the rare sets of the story you can go to without a fence or a prohibition sign.
The Eleven figure in a hospital gown, as she enters the dining room.
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Frequently asked questions
Who is Benny Hammond?
The owner and cook of Benny's Burgers, a roadside restaurant at the edge of Hawkins. He takes Eleven in and feeds her on November 7, 1983, then he is shot that same evening by the laboratory's agents. He is the first named character the show kills.
How does Benny die?
By a bullet, in his own restaurant. Agent Connie Frazier presents herself as a social worker, talks with him for a few minutes, then shoots. The laboratory's men then arrange the scene to make it look like a suicide.
Why do the agents kill Benny?
Because he called social services about a child escaped from the laboratory. It is the laboratory's men who answer the call, and they eliminate the only adult able to say where Eleven is and what she looks like.
Who plays Benny?
Chris Sullivan, an American actor born in 1980, known afterward for the role of Toby in This Is Us and for a supporting role in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
In how many episodes does Benny appear?
Only one while he is alive: the first episode of season 1, "The Vanishing of Will Byers." His body and the investigation into his death then occupy part of the second episode, "The Weirdo on Maple Street."
Is Benny really the show's first death?
He is the first named character who dies on screen. The very first death of the story is a scientist with no name, snatched in a laboratory elevator, during the episode's opening scene.
What becomes of Benny's Burgers after his death?
The restaurant closes and falls apart. In March 1986, the abandoned building serves as a hideout for the high school basketball team: Jason Carver and his teammates celebrate their title there, and Lucas wakes up there the morning the town learns of a high school girl's death.
Does Benny's Burgers really exist?
The set is real: it is Tiffany's Kitchen, a restaurant in Lithia Springs, west of Atlanta, in Georgia, at 7413 Lee Road. The establishment still operates and is visited like any restaurant.
