The ‘Stranger Things’ Writers Respond To Whether A Scene Was Edited To Make A Character Look Like Less Of A ‘Perv’

Jonathan Byers is still a creep, but not as much of a creep as we were led to believe.

Yesterday, we learned of a conspiracy theory in the Stranger Things fan community on TikTok that a scene from season one where Jonathan is spying on his crush, Nancy Wheeler, while she takes her shirt off was George Lucas-‘d to make him seem like less of a pervert. “Some fans have said he raised the camera once more, and claim they saw him deliberately take more pictures of Nancy while she was in this vulnerable position. Instead, he raises his camera and the edit makes it look like he chose to photograph Barb (fully clothed and sitting by the pool) instead,” Insider reported.

The Stranger Things writers’ room Twitter account has settled the issue:

— stranger writers (@strangerwriters) July 26, 2022

“PSA: no scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited. And they never will be,” @strangerwriters wrote. When a follower asked if that “also counts for the Jonathan spying on Nancy scene in s01,” they responded, “Yes.” He was still stalking Nancy, but at least he had the decency to… yeah, no, it’s weird, even without the edit.

“Previous seasons” does not include the most recent season, as Stranger Things editor Dean Zimmerman confirmed to Variety that “the editors are still uploading new shots to the episodes out on Netflix with updated VFX, as the series creators the Duffer Brothers want the show to be as perfect as possible.”