Netflix adds warning to Stranger Things episode after Texas shooting

Courtesy: Netflix Netflix has issued a content warning because to the general but terrifying similarities between the opening moments of Str...

Courtesy: Netflix

Netflix has issued a content warning because to the general but terrifying similarities between the opening moments of Stranger Things 4 and the recent mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas.

The new season begins with a short warning explaining that, while filming on Stranger Things 4 concluded in 2021, viewers may be horrified by the connections between scenes from the opening episode and the real-life Texas school shooting that killed two teachers and 19 students. Netflix had previously published the sequences in question to YouTube as a preview in the days leading up to Stranger Things season 4 debut, but the video has already been taken down.The content warning, depicted below, shows when you play the season 4 premiere on Netflix, and it appears only the first time you push play.

Courtesy: Netflix

Though the majority of Stranger Things 4 takes place in 1986, the season's first episode, "Chapter One: The Hellfire Club," takes place a few years earlier, when Hawkins National Laboratories was still operating and conducting tests on Eleven and other children with special powers. The Hawkins lab is framed as a jail and a teaching setting for Eleven and her peers in "The Hellfire Club," and the episode describes how their time there ended in a devastating attack that killed the majority of the youngsters and personnel. Because of its focus on helpless children losing their lives in classrooms, the Hawkins lab slaughter feels a lot like the show's take on a school shooting, both in and out of the greater context that will be revealed as the remainder of Stranger Things' latest season unfolds.

It's worth noting that Obi-Wan Kenobi's series premiere also has a scene of children being slain in a school environment, a picture of one of the most pivotal times in Star Wars' history.A content warning has now been added by Disney, however it displays on the show's Details page rather than at the start of the episode. "Although this fictional series is a continuation of the plot from Star Wars movies filmed many years ago, some scenes may be disturbing to viewers in light of the recent tragic events," the warning originally said. It was later condensed to "There are some moments in this fictional series that may be disturbing to some viewers."

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It's possible that the fact that Obi-Wan Kenobi and Stranger Things 4 both start with brutal school killings is purely coincidence. But, in the aftermath of the events in Uvalde, it's difficult not to perceive both shows as tapping into something deeply flawed about the country in which they're created - all at one of the most trying periods imaginable.

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