Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Film and TV, Stranger Things
Jess Hardiman
A ‘creepy’ Stranger Things moment involving Jonathan has been edited out of the show, eagle-eyed fans have spotted.
The Duffer Brothers have previously admitted that they planned to be ‘George Lucas-ing' certain sequences – going back and changing the edit of a TV show or film, as Lucas famously did with some of the Star Wars films.
Speaking to Variety last month, the co-creators said they might be switching up Will’s birthday, because it was ‘too sad’ and ‘doesn’t make any narrative sense’.
Matt Duffer added: “We have George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about.”
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Ross chipped in: “You do have the physical copies though, the Blu-rays and stuff — you’d have to compare.”
Ross then ‘let it slip’ that they’d even changed something from Volume 1 after it had already been released on 27 May
“Some of the visual effects,” he said.
“It’s not, like, story, but you’re essentially patching in shots. Netflix is — I don’t think they’ve ever allowed people to patch on opening week and even weekend. And we said, ‘Well, why not?’ And he said, ‘Well, it makes us nervous'. And we’re like, ‘Well, maybe we try it this time'. And it turned out fine.”
Of course, Stranger Things fans are a dedicated bunch, meaning it was surely only a matter of time before they were able to pinpoint some of those edited scenes – including one in the second episode of season one, ‘The Weirdo on Maple Street’, which saw Jonathan taking photos of Nancy and Barb.
The sequence sees Jonathan hiding behind trees to take photos of Nancy and her friends at Steve’s house, before Nancy and Steve pop upstairs but are still visible from the second-storey window.
In the original cut, as Nancy starts with her back to the window, Jonathan lowers his camera for a moment – clearly realising he shouldn’t capture such an intimate moment – only to raise the camera again and take a photo of her.
Steve and his friends later tell Jonathan that the pictures are 'creepy' and prove he's been stalking the group - a sentiment many viewers have agreed with over time.
"Rewatching Stranger Things and I know Steve's friends were dicks but I don't blame them for doing what they did to Jonathan's camera and photos," one tweeted. "Like if some took pictures of my friend getting undressed I'd do the same he was being creepy as hell."
Another agreed: "Jonathan is an unlikable goblin who takes creepy photos. You cannot make me support him as a love interest."
Now, however, we don’t see Jonathan take those extra snaps of Nancy, with clever editing instead cutting to make it look like he photographs Barb sitting by the pool.
After noticing the change, one fan wrote on TikTok: “The Duffer Brothers taking scenes out of S1 to try to make Jonathan look like less of a perv.”
Someone else said on Twitter: “Apparently the Duffer Brothers have edited parts of season 1 of Stranger Things to make Jonathan taking photos seem *slightly* less creepy and to make Steve seem worse, changing their own narrative for new viewers. Do we see the problem with things exclusively being on streaming?”
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