Y’arr! Thar be spoilers below!
It’s kind of poetic, really. Monopoly is a board game critiquing capitalism, where the unfettered growth of one player’s wealth and holdings leads to bankruptcy for the rest. Netflix is currently dealing with plummeting stock values and massive layoffs due to the ramifications of shareholder expectations that a company must show constant, unsustainable, impossible growth. Today’s Bad Netflix News Du Jour combines the topics, as a new edition of a Stranger Things Monopoly game available in some Target stores features spoilers for the upcoming season of the secretive science-fiction show.
Back in April, Stranger Things fan accounts circulated photos of cards from the Hasbro game that appeared to reveal plot details from the upcoming season, which will be released on May 27. Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer “were said to have had a ‘total meltdown’ about the mishap,†according to sources with The Hollywood Reporter. But according to a Reddit thread that spread word of the spoilers in April, this new edition of the Monopoly game “is an officially licensed product distributed by a nationally recognized retailer and purchased fair and square by a consumer. Nobody stole it; nobody leaked a sample.†Of course, when you have a reaction noteworthy enough that people tell THR about it, you’re only going to boost awareness and curiosity about the spoilers you were so upset about. Picture the Duffer brothers flipping over a game table somewhere, sending Demogorgon-shaped pieces flying everywhere. Do not pass “Go.†Do not collect $30 million per episode.