Disclaimer: This post contains spoilers for Season 1 of Stranger Things.

For the life of me, I’ll never understand the Barb craze in Stranger Things. Furthermore, I’ll also never understand how the character managed to snag an Emmy nomination. When all said and done, she had roughly 27 lines in the whole series before she pulled into the Upside Down, thrashed about in an empty pool, and left to rot in the middle of the woods. Barb had all the promise of an interesting character, but didn’t have nearly enough screen time to warrant the love.

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But of course, short screen time has never stopped fans from having an unwarranted love affair with a character (I’m looking at you, Boba Fett), and some are looking forward to seeing what Season 2 has to offer. Sure, Barb herself has since passed on, but there are bound to be more characters who could help fill that void of common sense. Speaking with Screen Rant about the upcoming second season, producer/director Shawn Levy had the following to say about any Barb-esque characters making their way to the big screen.

“Yes. It’s Sean Astin. Yeah. Sean Astin as Bob is going to be, I’m saying it, but he’s kind of going to be the Barb of Season 2. His part is substantially bigger. He’s in a lot of episodes. He is magnificent. And one thing the Duffers do really well is when they see what an actor is capable of, they write to that. They don’t make the actor play what’s on the page. They often change what’s on the page to exploit everything that’s unique about that actor. They did it with Steve Harrington last season and this season again and they did it big time with Sean Astin who as Bob I think is going to be a Barb level fan favorite.”

Details regarding Astin’s character are slim, but we do know that he’s dating the eternally-tormented Joyce this time around. He’s also someone who, it sounds like, ended up being more important than the filmmakers had originally planned. All in all, it’s great to hear that they’ll actually be giving him some actual time on screen — let’s just hope fans fall for him as they did Barb.

And speaking of Barb, the outlet asked the Duffer Brothers about the comparison of Sean Astin’s character to Barb, and they said:

“It’s hard to know. I mean, we weren’t expecting the Barb phenomenon. But I will say he has more lines than Barb. And Sean Astin is, he’s one of those guys that he wasn’t initially how we were envisioning the role but, once he came on board and once we started seeing what he was doing with his character, he just changed the entire trajectory, really of some of the plot of the show and certainly of that character. He’s an incredibly likable guy in real life and then also hopefully in the show. I love Bob. I think other people will too.

“But Barb may have been lightning in the bottle. I don’t know. We are not with any character trying to create a new Barb. It’s a fruitless exercise.”

It’s nice to know that they aren’t actively trying to outdo themselves in this department. When all said and done, it really was lightning in a bottle, and they’d be doing themselves a disservice by trying to capture it for a second time.

What do you hope to see out of Sean Astin’s character? Let us know your thoughts down below!

Stranger Things Season 2 hits Netflix On October 27, 2017.

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SOURCE: Screen Rant