Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Andrew Sanford | News | November 7, 2025
The final season of Stranger Things is fast approaching, and all anyone can talk about is David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown. It makes sense why. There were recent revelations that Brown had filed a bullying complaint against Harbour, which has set the internet ablaze. Seemingly in an attempt to quell that news, Harbour and Brown were very buddy-buddy at the premiere. But what if that doesn’t work? Confirm a fan theory!
Spoilers for the upcoming season of Stranger Things are ahead, but they are slight.
Today, Netflix released the first five minutes of the new season (well, it’s more like four minutes and 25 seconds). Instead of taking place where the show left off, we jump back to the first season to find a young Will Byers trapped in the Upside Down. Then, we’re hit with one of two big revelations: Will looks terrible. Not because he’s overcome with Upside Down sickness or whatever, but because they either de-aged the actor who plays him, Noah Schnapp, or recreated him completely with CGI.
I’d believe either, honestly, because he looks terrible. Maybe it’s just the uncanny valley of it all, but he also has eyes like Alita Battle Angel. Just enormous Pixar eyes shoved into a computer-generated face. He doesn’t even look much like his younger self, which makes me lean more toward de-aging, but I’m just not sure. All I know is that even if you’re budget is absurdly large, don’t try to de-age characters unless you’re Martin Scorcesse, and even then, think twice.
The second revelation is something fans have been theorizing for a while now: abducting Will wasn’t the random act of a demagorgon; Vecna did it. The clip shows the demagorgon chasing Will through the Upside Down, as the young boy avoids it by climbing a ridiculously high tree, only to fall and narrowly survive. Then, he’s brought to Vecna (but still unconscious) and is fed a bunch of nasty stuff that we see him puke out later in the first season.
Vecna reveals that Will has always been part of the plan, which is supported by most of what we’ve seen, but this puts a pretty definite point on it. I’m still excited for this season, but the clip was pretty underwhelming. Maybe if I hadn’t heard the theory already, it would have hit harder, but I also think seeing it weeks in advance didn’t help (that’s on me). Cueing up the first episode and being treated with a revelation like this would have been pretty exciting, but Netflix needed to change the narrative.
I genuinely don’t think we would have seen this clip had the news of Brown and Harbour not gotten out. This feels like the kind of moment that would kick-start a new show in a fun, surprising way. Regardless, it’s out there, and now, fans can get even more excited knowing their theory was correct. That doesn’t change how awful Will looks in the clip, though.
