Stranger Things Bosses Confirm the Fate of Fan-Favorite Character

Still reeling from Stranger Things? Good, just know you're not alone. Since the Netflix series captivated audiences when it dropped in July, all sorts of wild fan theories about the Upside Down, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and the fates of several characters have been swirling in every corner of the Internet. Well, the Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators and executive producers of the series, are here to put your mind at ease about one theory and character in particular: Barb.

The fan-favorite played by Shannon Purser was best friends with Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and was unceremoniously whisked away to the Upside Down early in the series while sitting alone on a diving board at a high school party she so did not want to be at. While everybody was busy freaking out over the disappearance of Will (Noah Schnapp), Nancy seemed to be the only one considered about Barb. Her fate was sealed toward the end of the series when Eleven said she couldn't find Barb in the Upside Down and Joyce (Winona Ryder) and Hopper (David Harbour) saw her lifeless body while searching for Will. But we never saw Barb die, which is often a crucial moment in sci-fi and horror works. Could Barb show up again in season two, should there be one?

"I can't see it happening" Matt Duffer told IGN. "But Barb will not be forgotten. We'll make sure there's some justice for Barb. People get very frustrated, understandably, that the town doesn't seem to be really dealing with Barb. That stuff is all happening. We're just not spending any screen time on it. It's not like her parents are like ‘Oh Barb left. She died!' Season one actually takes place over the course of six or seven days – it's a really short period of time. So part of what we want to do with hypothetical season two is to explore the repercussions of everything that happened."

RIP Barb, RIP. Now about that second season…what's taking so long, Netflix?!

At TCA, Matt explained they have more story to tell about the citizens of Hawkins, Indiana.

"We wanted to feel like a big movie, so we wanted to solve that main tension of where Will went and what happened to him," Matt told reporters during the summer TCA panel. "But then there's the bigger mythology behind what happened, so there's definitely a lot of dangling threads at the end…if people wanted it and Netflix wanted it, we could explore it and continue the storyline."