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A special fictional bond. From The CW’s Riverdale to Netflix’s Stranger Things, viewers have witnessed many memorable TV sibling bonds over the years.
Stranger Things, which debuted in 2016, explored Jonathan Byers’ (Charlie Heaton) search for his younger brother, Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), in the first season. As the hit Netflix series approached its final episodes, the brothers grew even closer when Jonathan comforted Will following his emotional moment with Mike (Finn Wolfhard).
Schnapp later revealed that Will almost didn’t have the season 4 conversation — which hinted at his character’s sexuality — with Jonathan onscreen. “So this scene was actually not originally written in the script. It was only until after I did the scene of me in the van, where they saw me crying and the protectiveness that you see with Jonathan looking in the rearview mirror,” he told Variety in July 2022. “[The Stranger Things writers] were like, ‘We need a scene with that.’”
The actor continued: “So they wrote it as we were filming. It’s also very important for people to see that Will is not alone — because all we ever see of him is struggling and feeling depressed and that he can’t be himself. Jonathan is talking to him in code — it’s just the perfect way to tell someone like Will that he cares about him and he accepts him no matter what. I think it was really wholesome.”
Meanwhile, Riverdale threw some major obstacles at the Blossom twins when the 2016 pilot kicked off with Jason’s (Trevor Stines) disappearance. His twin sister, Cheryl (Madelaine Petsch), later discovered that he died before getting to run away from the small town.
After fans questioned Cheryl and Jason’s very close bond ahead of his death, Petsch set the record straight about the pair.
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“The word ‘twincest’ has been thrown around a lot,” she shared with Teen Vogue in 2017. “The way that I rationalized it was that it’s very clear that she grew up in a very, very dark family. The only light that she had was Jason, the only love that she ever felt was Jason. Her parents never really showed her love, they didn’t really care about her, she turned to Jason for everything. The loss of him hurt her so badly, he was her person.”
Ahead of the CW show’s seventh and final season, Riverdale took the characters back to the 1950s — and introduced Nichola Barasch as Julian Blossom in this version of the story. In May 2023, Barasch praised Petsch for her help transitioning to set as her onscreen sibling.
“The first week after we met each other and we hugged and she said, ‘Hey brother’ and I said, ‘Hey sister.’ She gave me some insight into Julian and that he was a doll and — I was aware of some of it, but she was filling me in on some of those details,” he told Decider. “And, you know, possibly consumed Julian in the womb when Jason was alive and now, I guess the opposite is true … I had to kind of learn by being there.”
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