Stranger Things concept art reveals it could have been MUCH worse for Barb
It’s official - Barb got off lightly in ‘Stranger Things’.
A batch of deliciously macabre ‘Stranger Things’ concept art has appeared online thanks to the folks at Screen Crush… and it looks as though Barb could have met an even grislier end.
“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,” said concept artist Aaron Sims. And judging from this new concept art, he really isn’t kidding.
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“And something then growing on top of her - thus, the ribs poking out of her stomach in the first shot.”
Of course, poor Barb was the first innocent casualty of ‘Stranger Things’ - meeting a rather sticky end thanks to the horrific Demogorgon. But after disappearing early in the series while ducking out of a house party she should never have been at, it was only right at the end of the show’s formidable first season that we finally found out what happened to her.
And we thought it was bad enough.
“In the final design, they ended up veering away from that because it became too unrecognizable,” said Sims. “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.”
In another piece of concept art, it’s revealed that spiders may have been crawling out of Barb’s mouth in that scene. That’s right - just when you thought the Upside Down was bad enough, they introduce even more nightmare-inducing elements.
“In the script for that episode, there was specifically a description of a spider coming out of her mouth, which we incorporated into the design of that second shot … we don’t really have an explanation for its existence; the design is based around the script’s description.”
Thankfully, that never made it to the screen.
Instead, we saw the definitely-dead Barb with one of those gruesome slugs crawling out of her mouth… exactly the same kind of slug we saw Will Byers coughing up at the end of the season. But does it give us some idea about the life cycle of the Demogorgon?
Many fans have speculated that this could be an ‘Alien’ inspired creature - evolving from its slug form into the creature that stalks and kills poor Barb. We even saw a very ‘Alien’-like egg in the Upside Down… but is it all connected?
“The egg was a design for something you actually see a couple times in the show, whether you recognize it or not,” Sims explained. “There are a couple encounters where we see the Demogorgon hunkered over, eating something - when Nancy goes into the Upside-Down through the tree, and when Eleven finds the creature in her ‘vision’, it’s hunkered over this egg, feeding off of it. It’s not clear whether or not this is the creature’s offspring - we don’t even know if it’s the same species. The only info we have is that the creature is feeding off this egg somehow.”
What does this mean? We’ll probably have to wait until Season Two to find out.
In the meantime, check out even more of this cool ‘Stranger Things’ concept art over at Screen Crush. Not all of it will make your stomach churn… I promise.
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Picture Credit: Aaron Sims Creative, Netflix.
Do you think Barb got off lightly? Would you want to see ‘Stranger’ things use those grislier scenes? Leave your comments below… and follow Ryan Leston on Twitter, Facebook or my official Tumblr blog for more on the latest TV shows.
