Barb’s Death On Stranger Things Could Have Been A LOT Worse

If you were disappointed in how Barb's storyline wrapped up on Stranger Things, you're not alone. Lots of viewers felt left hanging after she died.

However, you can take consolation in the fact that the next season (if there is one) will revisit it. You can also comfort yourself by knowing it could have been much worse. Aaron Sims, who did visual effects for the show, told Screen Crush that Barb's original death scene was far more graphic — and he shared the concept art to prove it. In it, she's covered in cobwebs with her ribs jutting upward from her body and her insides spilling out. "Based on our original discussion with the Duffers on this design, we wanted to go really graphic with it to highlight the horrific aspects of Barb being eaten, and something then growing on top of her," he explained. "Thus, the ribs poking out of her stomach in the first shot." At the end, though, the logistics of portraying the death won out. “It was difficult to tell exactly what had happened to her; it wasn’t an issue of it being too graphic, but rather, that the viewer needed to see something that was very recognizably dead,” Sims said. There's one way in which the final product was actually a bit grosser than the concept art. She's got a spider crawling out of her mouth here, but on the show, she had a slug.

Is it wrong that we kind of like the original version better? We feel for poor Barb, but this is just so wonderfully twisted.