Stranger Things’ co-creators, The Duffer Brothers, have admitted to secretly editing some of the older seasons of their hit Netflix series without revealing the specific changes to viewers.
“We have ‘George Lucas-ed’ things also that people don’t know about,” Matt Duffer said in an interview earlier this month, referring to the Star Wars director’s quirk of editing his films years after they’d been released.
The Duffer Brothers declined to reveal exactly which episodes they had been tampering with, although Ross Duffer hinted that fans could use older physical DVD and Blu-ray copies to scan for the subtle differences now the episodes on Netflix have been updated.
The brothers also revealed plans to change an episode from the first run of the latest season (the first volume of season four) to account for an unintended plothole pertaining to Will’s birth date.
Matt Duffer said the team might just “George Lucas”, the season two episode in which Will’s mom (Winona Ryder) reveals that Will’s birthday is March 22nd. His new birthday would be May 22nd “because ‘May’ can fit in Winona’s mouth”.
Duffer concluded that the mistake, which was pointed out by some of their more eagle-eyed fans, didn’t make narrative sense for the characters. “It’s too sad,” he told Variety. “But we were talking about it yesterday, and I think we’re going to George Lucas that.”
Ross Duffer also revealed that they had already made some changes to the visual effects in the season four episodes that were released in May. “Netflix is — I don’t think they’ve ever allowed people to patch on opening week and even weekend. And we said, ‘Well, why not?’ And he said, ‘Well, it makes us nervous.’ And we’re like, ‘Well, maybe we try it this time.’ And it turned out fine,” Duffer said. “I’m just glad we’ve turned ‘George Lucas’ into a verb.”
The popular fourth season of Stranger Things is now available to stream on Netflix. Watch the trailer for the season below.
