The “Stranger Things” fandom is meticulous, but so are the creators.
So when fans caught a continuity error in an episode from Season 4, the show’s creators, the Duffer brothers, promised to rectify the situation the George Lucas way.
Viewers were quick to notice a calendar that showed the date as March 22 in one of the Season 4 episodes, which brought up confusion for some fans. In Season 2, Joyce (Winona Ryder) revealed that the birthday of her son Will (Noah Schnapp) was the same date, according to Indie Wire.
But the Season 4 episode featured no celebration or even mention of his special day, making it seem as if Will’s loved ones had completely forgotten.
In an interview with Variety, Matt Duffer revealed that Will’s new birthday will now be May 22, mostly because “because ‘May’ can fit in Winona’s mouth” in that Season 2 episode. “So that would be us George Lucas-ing the situation.”
He elaborated in a Showrunner Sitdown interview that it would be too disheartening if no one, including his mom, remembered Will’s birthday.
“It’s too sad!” Matt Duffer said. “And it doesn’t make any narrative sense. But we were talking about it yesterday, and I think we’re going to George Lucas that.”
Per Collider, he admitted that this wouldn’t be the first time they’ve “George Lucased” things that fans haven’t caught on to — though fans might catch the changes if they have physical copies to compare, added brother and co-creator Ross Duffer. Is anyone up to the challenge?
As for the references to Lucas, the director made many changes to the “Star Wars” movies, from audio mixing to replacing cast members, after their theatrical release. He did it mostly to utilize the latest CGI technology in the original trilogy and later to make other films cohesive and take out continuity errors. There were countless changes made to “A New Hope” and he even went so far as to switch the ending of “The Empire Strikes Back,” according to GameRant.
“I’m just glad we’ve turned ‘George Lucas’ into a verb,” said Ross Duffer in the interview.