1Barb was, to some, a blink-and-you’ll-miss her
character. In Season 1, she was Nancy’s dowdier, more conservative friend—the voice of reason Nancy routinely ignored. As you’ll recall, Barb went missing during a party at Steve’s house, after Nancy decided to go upstairs with Steve following a fight with Barb. As it turned out, the Upside Down had a thirst for dejected teens—because that’s where she was taken, and that’s where she died. Although all of Hawkins seemed bent on finding Will Byers in Season 1, Barb’s disappearance was treated with far less urgency—something her fans would never let Matt and Ross Duffer forget. The hashtag #JusticeForBarb became a rallying cry as Stranger Things became a pop culture phenomenon, and in the run-up to Season 2, the show’s creators, the Duffer Brothers, have repeatedly
promised closure for her arc.
“People get very frustrated, understandably, that the town doesn’t seem to be really dealing with Barb,” Matt Duffer said in an interview last year. “That stuff is all happening. We’re just not spending any screen time on it. . . Season 1 actually takes place over the course of six or seven days—it’s a really short period of time. So part of what we want to do with hypothetical Season 2 is to explore the repercussions of everything that happened.”
