Stranger Things season five backlash has reached new levels after fans supposedly caught the Duffer brothers using both Reddit and ChatGPT while writing the script — but a director has shut down the rumours.
The revelation came after Netflix dropped One Last Adventure, a documentary that takes us behind the scenes of the making of the fifth and final season of the show.
One clip doing the rounds shows Matt and Ross Duffer working on a script draft on a laptop, with the apparent Reddit logo on one tab catching the attention of internet sleuths.
“Duffer Brothers had a Reddit tab open while writing the Stranger Things 5 ending,” one X user wrote alongside a snippet of the scene.
The implication is that the creators were consulting fan commentary or theories when penning the final season, and scores of fans took the claim and ran with it.
“Who on Reddit is responsible for the terrible ending?” one user wrote, while others said the Duffers “took the ending from the wrong [Reddit] post” or suggested that “the subreddit unwittingly played a role in the finale”.
But the Duffers’ extracurricular ‘research’ didn’t stop there. Another viral screenshot from the doco, also lifted from script writing sessions, seemingly shows the ChatGPT logo on at least one tab as the Duffers tap away at the finale.
“The Duffer brothers really used ChatGPT for this script? WTF,” one fan wrote, with others claiming the use of AI would explain “why the finale felt different and incomplete”.
But for every dissenter, there was a defender. Some fans rejected the claims by explaining that chatbots were not at their peak when the finale was being written, while others described the viral screenshots as “desperate”.
The blurriness of the screenshots makes it difficult to say with absolute certainty that the Duffers used Reddit or ChatGPT.
But Martina Radwan, who directed the documentary, isn’t convinced. “I mean, are we even sure they had ChatGPT open?” Radwan told The Hollywood Reporter. “There’s a lot of chatter where [social media users] are like, ‘We don’t really know, but we’re assuming’,” she added.
Radwan went on to say that she was in a state of disbelief when the rumours were circulating given the complexity of a show like Stranger Things. “How can you possibly write a storyline with 19 characters and use ChatGPT, I don’t even understand.
“Nobody has actually proved that [ChatGPT] was open… What I find heartbreaking is everybody loves the show, and suddenly we need to pick it apart,” she said.
The director confirmed she never saw the Duffers using ChatGPT, saying instead that the writers room was a place for “conversation”.
“I witnessed creative exchanges. I witnessed conversation. People think ‘writers room’ means people are sitting there writing. No, it’s a creative exchange. It’s story development … I think being in the writers room is suich a privilege and a gift to be able to witness that,” Radwan said.
Much like Eleven’s fate in the finale, it’s up to you what to believe, but it’s not the only tidbit to emerge from the Stranger Things doco.
We also learned that the finale script wasn’t finished until halfway through production, that the Duffers were unsure how to plan Eleven’s ending, and that they predicted the finale backlash well before it premiered.
What they might not have predicted is eagle-eyed sleuths snooping on their browsers, but maybe the fandom just assumed Eleven’s telepathic powers?
Lead images: Getty Images, Netflix and X
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