Episodes of Arcane, Heartstopper, and other Netflix shows leak; more to come?

Just the other week, the season finale of HBO's House of the Dragon leaked online, the result of "an unintentional release from an international third-party distributor." Episodes of Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon have been leaking ahead of time for years, so while this was surely vexing for Warner Bros. Discovery, it's not their first time at the rodeo.

But they're not the only ones going through this kind of thing. Recently, full episodes of several Netflix shows leaked, according to The Wrap. This include episodes from upcoming seasons of Heartstopper (which premieres October 3) and Arcane (which is due out in November), as well as from the animated show Terminator Zero, which drops on August 29. “One of our post-production partners has been compromised and footage from several of our titles has unfortunately leaked online," Netflix said in a statement. "Our team is aggressively taking action to have it taken down.”

The anime-focused streaming service Crunchyroll also got hit, with new episodes of Re:Zero, Ranma 1/2 and Dandadan all leaking out. “We’ve opened an investigation to identify the source of this leak,” Crunchyroll said, “And our team is taking action to have it taken down.”

When you distribute your shows digitally, this kind of thing tends to happen. Or at least, no streaming service has managed to come up with a fool-proof way to stop it. I don't think we've seen the end of leaks.

Episodes of Stranger Things season 5 to leak?

This claim is hard to verify, but there's chatter about a hacker getting hold of the first three episodes from the upcoming fifth seasons of Stranger Things (which will be the show's last) and threatenening to release them online this Wednesday, according to Forbes.

This seems like a juicy rumor, but I'm not sure there's much to it, in part because the cast and crew are still filming the fifth season of Stranger Things — they just crossed the halfway mark the other month — so I find it hard to believe that ther are any episodes in a fit state to leak at all. But I'll guess we'll find out on Wednesday. If there really is footage of Stranger Things, which is one of Netflix's biggest shows, released this far out from the 2025 release date, it will take the leaking problem to a whole new level.

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