Death is a tricky thing in any TV show or movie with even a hint of a supernatural or sci-fi element. People have become so desensitized to resurrections that pretty much everyone will just assume that any dead character can come back to life as long as the camera doesn’t linger on their corpse for a moment. For example, Boba Fett fell into a killer pit of sand in Return Of The Jedi, but Star Wars fans have spent decades arguing about/writing fan-fiction about/giving Parks & Recreation speeches about him climbing out of his hole and going on more adventures.
These days, though, people are so primed for characters to come back to life that even a lingering shot of a lifeless corpse isn’t good enough, as Game Of Thrones taught us a while back. That brings us to Shannon Purser’s Barb, a fan-favorite character from Stranger Things who got grabbed by a monster and taken into the scary Upside Down reality. Viewers loved Barb, and since the whole plot of Stranger Things’ first season involved rescuing someone from the Upside Down, some of them have been begging the people who work on the show to bring Barb back for the second season.
Unfortunately, Barb is totally and completely dead, and her slimy corpse was definitely highlighted for a few moments, but that hasn’t stopped Stranger Things executive producer Shawn Levy from needing to confirm that she won’t come back. Levy dropped that non-reveal in a Facebook Live video with The Hollywood Reporter, adding that the show has made a point in its upcoming season to avoid explicitly fan service-based decisions like that. Instead, he says he’s been encouraging series creators The Duffer Brothers to tell the story they want to tell, and not worry about the story the internet wants them to tell.
Levy also touches on Winona Ryder’s transformation into a meme back in January, so the whole interview is worth a watch for both Stranger Things fans and gif fans.