STRANGER THINGS Creators Open Up About a Certain Character's Fate in Season 2
There was a character introduced in Stranger Things Season 2 that audiences couldn't help but adore.
Then the Duffer Brothers had to go and kill that character off! During a recent interview with the cast and crew of the series, they talk about the Death of the character and revealed that they kept the character alive for as long as they possibly could.
If you've already watched the series, I'm sure you know the character that I'm talking about is Bob, who was wonderfully played by Sean Astin. I hated that they had to kill off the character, but his death meant something, and he didn't die in vain. Bob... was a hero.
It turns out that the original plan was to kill Bob off much earlier in the season, but they liked the character so much that the Duffer Bros. prolonged his death for as long as they could. Matt Duffer told THR:
"He wasn't supposed to be that big of a character, and he was supposed to die a lot earlier. Then we found Sean Astin and met him and fell in love with this guy as a person and as an actor. We really started to fall in love with his character."
He went on to say that Sean Astin transformed the character that they had originally written and that's one of the main reasons why they kept him around a bit longer. He explains:
"Bob wasn't designed to be the likable character who perishes; he was designed to be kind of just an out-of-it dork. Sean Astin really transformed that role, to the point where we kept kicking his death down the road. We kept pushing it and pushing it until we could push it no further — when we got to episode eight and we realized narratively we still had to do it. It was the hardest scene to write all year, just because it was hard to lose that character and lose Sean. We had such a great time working with him."
I won't lie, I shed a tear when Bob died. That character reminded me a lot of myself and the person I am today so it really hit me hard. Producer Shawn Levy goes on to talk about how the gut-wrenching moment serves to fuel the stakes heading into the finale:
"It's an example of really what I hope season two succeeds at — a big emotional idea, told in a really ambitious and cinematic way. That's really what we're going with always for this series. Both seasons have a slower burn from everyday life and a desire for normalcy devolving into crazy-ass stuff, forcing heroism among our characters. That was the arc of season one and that was the arc of season two. Bob's death in the last third of season two was always a big pivot point to be our ramp into the finale action."
Will there be "Justice for Bob" going into Season 3? Probably not. The Duffers say, "I don't think you can ever re-create whatever happened with Barb." Or can you?
It's a shame that we'll never see Bob again in the series, but he died saving the people he loved. What do you all think about how Bob's death was handled in Season 2?