Are You Satisfied? Here’s How “Stranger Things” Delivered #JusticeForBarb In Season Two

It’s fair to say that, as a society, we went a little Barb-crazy last year.

Okay, more than a little.

But with Season Two of Stranger Things upon us, we finally have a reason to reflect on the raw deal Nancy’s always reliable, eyebrow-popping friend Barb received in Season One.

(In case you’ve somehow missed out on all this Barb madness, you can catch up with her 30-odd lines of dialogue over at Buzzfeed. This is the entirety of Shannon Purser’s Emmy-nominated performance, FYI.)

So, assuming you’re familiar with Stranger Things S1, you already know…

… Barb was dragged, unceremoniously, into the Upside Down, and was discovered as a slug-infested corpse at the end of the season. To think, it was all because Nancy left Barb to go make out with Steve.

Like I said: Raw deal.

The millions online who identified with this red-headed hero demanded #JusticeForBarb, and the Duffer Brothers, creators of Stranger Things, promised to deliver in Season Two.

David Harbour, aka Hopper, even doubled down on The Tonight Show, in an almost-natural manner that seemed to acknowledge the very real threat posed by angry Barb fans.

Here’s how they delivered. Obviously, spoilers ahead.

In the new season’s first episode, Nancy and Steve join Barb’s parents for a dinner of finger-lickin’ KFC, where they are forced to guiltily face a bunch of photo shrines to their felled friend. Her folks (who don't actually know about any of this Upside Down business) announce they’ve hired an investigative journalist to locate Barb, holding out hope she’s still alive and not, as mentioned earlier, full of slugs.

Nancy wants to tell them the slug-filled truth, but Steve tries to talk her out of it, warning that they could be killed by the government, who covered-up their initial dig into the Upside Down. Nancy finds a more sympathetic ear in Jonathan, who agrees to help her covertly record Dr. Owens at the Hawkins Lab and deliver proof of the conspiracy to the bearded journalist. They then devise a plan to leak a “watered-down” version of the truth to the public, to keep from being called crazy for suggesting Barb died as a result of being pulled through an interdimensional gate by a Demogorgon.

Then, a bunch of romantic and supernatural stuff happens, which we won’t get into here….

But a “One Month Later” title card greets a prologue in which we learn that the U.S. Department of Energy finally copped to Barb’s death, though they blamed it on “exposure to a chemical asphyxiant”, and not “half-eaten by otherworldly monster”. The controversy’s enough to boot those pesky scientists out of Hawkins, and Barb’s parents finally give their daughter a proper burial, more than a year after she died.

There you have it!

Were you satisfied with Nancy and Jonathan’s brand of “watered-down” justice, or had you hoped Barb would return from the dead to unleash some zombie vengeance?

Let us know.

Photo: Netflix