[This post contains minor spoilers for Stranger Things 2.]
Due to the allegations that Kevin Spacey has sexually assaulted a number of underage boys, Netflix’s former flagship series House Of Cards has been forced to look in on itself and move forward with a final season that won’t have its star. Meanwhile, though nothing happening behind the scenes of Stranger Things—Netflix’s new flagship series—is quite as horrid as what Spacey has been accused of, it still doesn’t sound perfect. Specifically, the show is being called out for a revelation shared on an episode of the Beyond Stranger Things companion series, during which series creators and showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer explained that a kiss between Sadie Sink’s Max and Caleb McLaughlin’s Lucas was not only unscripted but also that they specifically did it because they knew Sink was nervous about it.
This comes from Teen Vogue, which reports that Ross Duffer originally joked to Sink that the big dance in the show’s second season finale would involve her character kissing Lucas, and the idea made her feel so “stressed out” that Duffer decided to go through with it for real. He apparently got a kick out of making her uncomfortable, with him joking to Sink on Beyond Stranger Things that it was her “fault” they did the kiss scene—which Teen Vogue says Sink (who is only 15) took “incredulously.” She also says she was “so freaked” by the idea of the kiss partially because it was in a room full of other cast and crew members, along with her parents.