Was that Jonathan scene in Stranger Things really changed?

In case you missed the current Stranger Things gossip that’s trending online, here’s the lowdown: Back in June, Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer fessed up during a far-ranging interview with Variety that they had forgotten poor Will Byers’ birthday in season 4; an episode took place on his special day with nary a peep from any of Will’s negligent loved ones. This was an unintentional mistake; the Duffers joked that they would have to “George Lucas” things so that Will wouldn’t have to celebrate his birthday alone in his room in misery, referencing the fact that Star Wars creator George Lucas famously released special editions of the original Star Wars trilogy years later that contained new and tweaked footage, like Greedo shooting first at Han, etc etc.

More, the Duffers said that they had “George Lucas’d things also that people don’t know about,” alluding to other changes that only those with physical release Blu-rays of the show would ever have a hope of parsing out.

The Internet being the Internet, people took up this challenge. Soon, a TikTok was going viral that claimed that a scene in the first season’s second episode, “The Weirdo on Maple Street,” had been altered to make Jonathan Byers look “less like a perv.” The scene involves Jonathan photographing Nancy Wheeler while she’s getting undressed in Steve Harrington’s room, before turning his camera on her friend Barb, who’s sitting forlornly at the pool mere seconds before she gets snatched by the Demogorgon. The claim goes that a brief shot of Jonathan snapping a photo as Nancy takes off her shirt is missing.

Soon after, British GQ published an article decrying the idea of creators going back and tweaking television shows or movies. Eventually, the writers of Stranger Things responded on Twitter, claiming “no scenes from previous seasons have ever been cut or re-edited. And they never will be.” This seems to directly contradict what the Duffers said in their interview about tweaking things. So what gives?

Was the shot of Jonathan taking pictures of Nancy in Stranger Things changed?

On the surface, this looks like a pretty open and shut case: the writers of the show have spoken, so we can presume they’re telling it straight. However, since the Duffer Brothers have claimed elsewhere that tweaks have been made, and also said they would be tweaking other things “George Lucas” style, we have a split decision. So was the sequence with Jonathan changed or what?

While the show’s writers are claiming that nothing was ever edited, I do think it’s important to point out that they would not be the ones doing the actual editing. I’m not calling the Stranger Things writers liars, I’m sure they’re making this argument in good faith. And it’s nearly impossible to prove the scene was altered unless you own the Blu-ray…or you happen to have seen the before and after recently enough to catch it.

I’m going to give you the deep cut here folks, with the disclaimer that this is a highly personal opinion, and since my memory is as flawed as anyone’s, it’s not the sort of thing you could use to prove this in a court of law. But I happened to re-watch all of Stranger Things right after Volume 1 of the current season dropped. That scene of Jonathan photographing Nancy’s naked back as she took off her shirt? I very much remember it happening, and I cringed and thought it was creepy when it did. This was in late May, literally the day after Volume 1 hit Netflix.

In the writing of this article, I went back to that episode fully expecting to see the same scenes and be able to say “look, the writers are telling it true and we’re all idiots for believing Internet rumors.” However, that very brief scene where Jonathan snaps the picture is missing. We’re talking about a second-long cut here, which seems to have been taken out in favor of keeping the focus on Nancy and Steve during their romance scene. Now, once Jonathan snaps the initial picture of Nancy looking out the window, we don’t see him again until after Nancy and Steve are hooking up and Jonathan turns his camera on Barb.

Obviously, I am a human being and there’s always a chance my memory’s off. But this was recent enough that I’m pretty sure it’s not. Let’s not just take my word for it though: let’s look at the evidence in the following episode, when Jonathan actually develops his pictures.

“Holly Jolly” shows the missing picture…and hints that a scene WAS cut

As you may recall, in the following episode, “Holly Jolly,” Jonathan develops the pictures he took of the party at Steve Harrington’s house, only for Steve and his bully friends to rip them up and break his camera. This ends up becoming an important plot point later on, because that picture of Barb also contains a silhouette of the Demogorgon. There are two scenes in this episode where we see Jonathan’s pictures: when he’s in the dark room developing them, and when the images are taken by Steve.

While there are plenty of pictures of the party and Steve’s house in the mix, there are three in particular that get extra attention (aka the camera lingers on them, or returns to them multiple times): the one of Barb, one of Nancy looking out the window while fully clothed, and one of her back while she’s taking her shirt off. Those are the three images that are “important” insofar as the plot of the season is concerned — the first is a clue about the Demogorgon, the second becomes a talking point about Nancy trying to fit in with the wrong crowd, and the third is mentioned several times because of how Jonathan violated her privacy.

Considering how prominent those photos are in the scene, it does back up the idea that we should have seen Jonathan take all three of them. We see him take plenty of other photos, some of which we glimpse here, like the ones of Steve’s friends partying by the pool. The only important photo we don’t see him take in “The Weirdo on Maple Street” is the one of Nancy undressing. And that doesn’t quite make sense, considering how prominently it features in the following episode. It’s almost as if “Holly Jolly” treats that photo as though we saw it being taken in the previous episode, and assumes we’ll recognize the context for it when it crops back up.

Regardless of whether the scene of Jonathan taking pictures was changed, the events of that scene are still exactly the same. Jonathan still took the images; we still see them. We just don’t see him take one of them. Whether it was edited out, only someone with a Stranger Things Blu-ray can say for certain.

I rest my case. Make of it what you will.

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