Stranger Things S4 and the Lab Test Subjects
The fourth season deepens the backstory of Hawkins National Laboratory and its whole roster of numbered test subjects. Most fans immediately think of One (001), played by the Crawler actor and voiced by Michael Park, but the hierarchy includes many others. Two comes up in the lab records and in conversations between Dr. Brenner and the staff, and people keep asking about the specific actor behind the two designee. The short version is that 002 does not get a named appearance with speaking lines in season four. The character exists primarily as a reference point in lab documentation and in Brenner's memory of earlier experiments. When you see a young version of a numbered subject on screen, it is usually a near-Einstein actor used for flashback sequences rather than a credited role specifically listed as "002." I spent an afternoon going through the on-screen lab files from the season, screenshotting the dossiers, and cross-referencing the numbered listings with the IMDB cast page for each episode. The files list 002 as a separate individual from 001, with different failure dates and different project tags. The production did not release a casting notice identifying the performer who physically portrayed Two in those archive shots. Most of the young lab children in that season are credited under the general "young Hawkins Lab subjects" or "near-Einstein ensemble" listings, and the specific numbering on screen is handled through prop design rather than separate billing.
If you saw someone online claiming that a particular credited actor played 002, that is most likely a fan theory built from costume continuity rather than a verified credit. The show's producers have not confirmed a named performer for that role. The closest thing to an answer comes from the production design notes, where the art department explains that they reused several child actors across multiple numbered roles and changed makeup, wigs, and lab coats to differentiate them. That means the same performer could appear as Three in one shot and Five in another, and the credits would not reflect that overlap. For practical purposes, if you are researching this for a paper, a podcast, or just your own curiosity, the reliable sources are the lab file props shown on screen, the episode commentaries, and the official season four companion material. Those documents consistently treat Two as a distinct test subject from One, but they do not name the actor who wore the role on camera. I found that the best workaround when building a timeline of the numbered subjects is to focus on the on-screen dossier text rather than trying to match a face to a number, since the show intentionally leaves that gap. The dossier for 002 references a failed connection attempt in 1979 and a different failure mode than One, which is about sensory deprivation and aggression. Two's file mentions environmental stress tolerance tests and vocal response metrics, which tells you something about how the character was used in the narrative even if we never see a full scene. There is a common mistake people make when researching these subjects. They assume that because a young actor appears in a lab flashback, that actor is permanently tied to one number. In practice, the production shifted performers between numbers during filming, and the editing process sometimes combined footage from different children to create a single on-screen subject. I learned this the hard way when I built a spreadsheet matching child actors to their numbered roles, only to discover that the same boy appeared as both 004 and 006 in different takes that made it into the final cut. The production used that approach to keep costs down and to avoid calling back too many child performers on tight schedules.
So if you want the straight answer, the actor credited as playing Two in Stranger Things season four is not publicly identified in the show's official credits. The character exists mainly as a background element in lab records and Brenner's recollections. The people who portray the numbered subjects are part of an ensemble of young performers, and the show does not break out each number as a separate credited role. That design choice keeps the focus on One as the primary antagonist of the backstory while letting the other numbers function as worldbuilding rather than character studies. It works for the story, but it makes trivia hunting frustrating.
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