Contextualising the Controversy
Stranger Things, one of the most beloved shows of the 21st century, was in turbulent waters after its lead actor Noah Schnapp made comments about Zionism as a then-freshly turned nineteen year old.
However, Schnapp’s fate that twined around the contemporary Gen-Z political landscape doesn’t obscure an anomaly but rather a symptom. Schnapp is just one of the many celebrities that have been scrutinised for their political standing; given the current geopolitical climate—everyone is expected to possess political fluency akin to a well-rehearsed manifesto in the back of their mind, ready to be deployed at any moment. The idea that one can be entitled to their political opinion became nothing but a hoax.
In literal terms, or from what his digital footprint delineated, it was a reflection of his support for Israel following the Hamas attack on October 7th, 2023. However, what triggered sustained backlash was not only what he said but what followed—or more precisely, what did not in the weeks that accompanied. As the side he supported retaliated with tenfold brutality, his silence—first noticed by fans and later amplified by media perusal—was subsumed into adjudication, where neutrality translated into alignment. While it is not unconventional for individuals to respond most imperatively when their own communities are being affected, digital discourse reframes this instinct as selective activism because being vocal about one injustice invites suspicion about every other.
The sentiment furthered when videos of him and his friends circulated on social media, most notably a clip rumoured to have been shared on 13th November 2023, where they were seen using stickers that said ‘HAMAS IS ISIS’ and ‘ZIONISM IS SEXY’—phrases that, at best, communicated insensitivity to the scale and complexity of the violence unfolding. This moment was received against the backdrop of mounting civilian deaths in Gaza, where Palestinian suffering had already rendered the political climate unbearably raw and morally charged.
Therefore, the audience who had watched Schnapp grow up on screen, from a frightened child in the Upside Down to a teenager whose coming out story resonated with many, became his most unforgiving critics. What unfolded was his identity as a Jewish American—someone with a legitimate platform as a young contemporary actor—reduced to nothing but a moral verdict. The empathy commonly extended to private individuals was withheld because his personhood had become symbolic rather than personal.
However–realistically speaking—what does accountability look like when the subject is a nineteen-year-old? One thing is, moral obligation doesn’t require heroism in 2026. It demands recognition by speaking publicly, contextualising one’s perspective, and acknowledging the weight of the moment. Schnapp did precisely this. He issued a public clarification that acknowledged the moment and articulated a broader opposition to violence against civilians. The more unsettling expectation, then, is not really accountability but ideological completeness: the expectation that someone barely out of adolescence arrives fully formed in politics, immune to contradiction or growth. However, this conversation is not limited to just Schnapp.
Cultural history is populated with figures far older, wealthier, and influential who have never addressed deeds that caused demonstrable desecration on a much larger scale. So, when the outrage is vexed out on a nineteen-year-old actor, it isn’t about standing against wrongdoings but about identifying who is visible enough—and pliable enough—to be pressured into compliance. The question: why him? Can only be answered when it is realised that it was never about virtue, just vulnerability.
The uncomfortable truth that many who pride themselves on political correctedness resist was reproduced in real time. What was done to Schnapp mirrors the very structures of power such movements claim to oppose: pressure applied downward, accountability demanded only where adherence is easiest. Outrage at a nineteen-year-old does not correct injustice; it rehearses it. He was young enough to bend, visible enough to be punished, and powerless enough to serve as a moral spectacle; proof that outrage is often exercised where resistance is weakest.
When Art Isn’t the Problem
For the viewers who are strong on the belief that their political stance comes before their fandoms, the question often appears deceptively simple: why not just disengage? But the framework being supplicated here is historically misaligned with the moment we are in. The concept of ‘separating art from the artist’ was structurally intended for dead artists, not living franchises.
The premise was simple: if a work could not stand independently—without the scaffolding of the creator’s personal beliefs—it was not art to begin with. Just because this concept has endured and moulded how we decide who to support does not signify it should go unquestioned. What the concept withheld, the sheer criticism of work that had already exited the marketplace of influence—where consuming the art did not empower the artist to shape discourse, profit materially, or use their platform to cause harm. However, today, art exists within a contrasting ecosystem of algorithms, corporations, and cultural momentum.
This is where the ideology begins to fracture. Now, there are contexts where separating art from the artist isn’t conceivable because continued engagement with their work promises profits and a platform to continue spreading hate or committing crime. It dignifies their abomination. R. Kelly’s music, for instance, cannot be divorced from his documented history of sexual abuse and exploitation, his music serving as an outlet through which sexual violence was aestheticised and normalised. His art did not mirror harm but rather became an extension of it. Even J.K. Rowling’s—the author of the forever adored series Harry Potter—public transphobia has increasingly resurfaced and now it stays embedded in her writing too. While Rowling has published other crime fiction under the Robert Galbraith pseudonym, Troubled Blood features a narrative in which a man dresses as a woman to commit violence, echoing her repeated claims that trans women pose a threat to cisgender women, while earlier works under the pseudonym depicted gender nonconformity as grotesque. In these cases, disengagement operates as a refusal to fund and legitimise harm still being actively perpetuated.
But Stranger Things does not operate in this register. The series is not authored by Noah Schnapp and neither does it articulate or endorse his personal beliefs; it is a show engineered and narrated by the Duffer Brothers. Schnapp occupies a performative role within a collaborative production where the work remains a science-fiction text, not an ideological mouthpiece, and there are no ethical “greys” to entangle where harm is not encased. Unlike art that reflects its creator’s worldview and demands accountability for the ideas it propagates, Schnapp’s performance does not breathe his beliefs—he can participate fully in the story without being forced to shoulder its moral weight.
In other words, his visibility does not render the show ethically compromised: he performs, but the show does not become a conduit for his personal ideology, and the responsibility for the narrative remains with its creators. Collapsing the distinction between the character and the actor portraying them poses as a stance for misunderstanding of intent and authorship. And such disengagement does not challenge power but it ends up distributing the blame downwards—the moral burden shifts to the most visible and least protected figure in the hierarchy. To demand it in this context is not progress; it is a narrowing of what art is allowed to be.
And yet, this dynamic is intensified in the age of social media, with celebrities being seen as ‘one of us’. Ethical friction is not enough reason to condemn someone because their lived experiences are fundamentally different from our own. Their opinions can be performed without conviction, polished for consumption, or even be entirely strategic—take them with a pinch of salt.
Still, we put them on a pedestal because our faith in political institutions has eroded, leaving us stranded to get clarity from whose expertise is storytelling through their work. At the end, they are individuals attempting to make a living within a system that rewards performance over nuance and outrage over reflection. Placing the burden of morality on them isn’t systematically damaging, but it effectively shifts confrontation from foundations that actually shape our political reality.
Why Couldn’t Will Byers Be Written Out?
For the Duffer Brothers, the creators of Stranger Things, the dilemma exemplified more than it did for the audience. Stranger Things is a one-of-a-kind TV show where coming-of-age stories—usually afforded only 90-120 minutes to capture the experience of growing up—expanded over a decade where the audience and the actors aged together. As with growing up itself, the world of Stranger Things no longer operated in absolutes; the black-and-white logic of childhood gave way to moral ambiguity, a shift that resonates with audiences who recognize this transition in their own lives. And thus, naturally, the Duffer Brothers had an obligation to deliver what the ‘it’s not just a show’ represented, to carry the narrative closure that had accumulated over years.
It was a decade later after he had premiered as Will Byers on Stranger Things when Noah Schnapp’s controversy emerged. The child actor became a public figure with political visibility in a radically altered geopolitical landscape very different from that of 2015. Not only this: when the American-Jewish actor publicly responded to the Hamas attacks on October 7th, 2023, and when videos of him using ‘Zionism is sexy’ stickers later made headlines—actions that were widely perceived and later clarified by Schnapp himself—all of this unfolded during the time gap between Season 4’s release in early 2023 and the series finale in December 2025. He was no longer the kid cast in 2015 but a young adult navigating a world whose paradigm had newer dynamics to learn since he started the show.
Yet, the finale that was released after a prolonged hiatus remained structurally bound to the narrative it began: a story that opened with the disappearance of Will Byers could not plausibly conclude without him too. Reducing his screentime, even when it was seen with the lens of reprimand and abhorrence, would have collided with narrative fidelity. In the decision to proceed with the storyline, the creators communicated a singular priority—allowing the show to reach the ending it had been building toward for years before their work became a battleground. The decision to preserve Will Byers’ role communicated not the inverse of insensitivity but an affirmation that the show’s last chronicle cannot be retrofitted to satisfy shifting public sentiment without sacrificing the work itself. Here, art remained subjective, art remained without a consensus as a prerequisite.
Just as the Duffer Brothers could not—and should not—reshape their story to accommodate every public expectation, platforms alike risk turning artistic expression into a tool for moral policing: what can be shown and what cannot be shown. That, too, functions as normative curation, shaping opinion in line with prevailing ideologies and recasting corporations as political actors— a role the world does not need more of. Rather than channeling outrage toward a nineteen-year-old actor, that energy could have been better spent addressing systemic injustices and supporting those whose lives were most affected by the conflict.
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