What actor played Dr. Sam Owens in season 3 of "Stranger Things"?

Paul Reiser played Dr. Sam Owens in season 3 of Stranger Things. Owens is a U.S. Department of Energy executive who became associated with Hawkins Laboratory after Dr. Martin Brenner’s departure.

Unlike Brenner, Owens is generally portrayed as more empathetic toward the people affected by the laboratory’s experiments. In season 2, he helped investigate Will Byers’s connection to the Upside Down and assisted in creating a new identity for Eleven. That history made him an important, if often off-screen, ally to the Hawkins group.

In season 3, Hopper contacts Owens after learning that a gate may have reopened beneath Hawkins. Owens arrives with government personnel during the season finale and helps raid the secret Soviet facility beneath Starcourt Mall. Viewers sometimes remember Reiser mainly from his sitcom work in Mad About You or his role in Aliens, but Stranger Things introduced him to a new generation as the scientist Sam Owens.