It’s time we talked about spoilers.
Or more importantly the spoiler culture that is fiercely gripping everyone’s favourite fandom.
Did anyone else notice that the second new trailers for Dr. Strange 2,The Batman, Moon Knight, Halo, Amazon’s LOTR show and about a hundred others dropped during last month’s Super Bowl, the Internet was besieged with fans pouring over every second with a fine tooth comb in search of elusive easter eggs? All in desperate hopes of providing a spoiler or two, entire months before some of this stuff hits either the silver screen or the streaming one.
And the aforementioned fare is only the tip of the iceberg. For years, determined movie fans and self-styled entertainment killers have used every tool at their disposal to try and reverse engineer the entire plots of movies and TV shows using the tiniest morsels they could get their hands on.
At the very least, this culture has created a world where more often than not, long awaited blockbusters and shows have few to no surprises to offer their respective audience when they finally debut. How often have you spent weeks, months and even years looking forward to something only to have over eager spoiler engineers spill the beans well before you pay the price of admission? How many times have you walked out of a theatre, full of disappointment because you already knew the end? Odds are you have more than once and it’s happening with more and more frequency.
Did you ever go hunting for your Christmas presents when you were a kid? Sure, it felt kind of great when you discovered them. Kind of exhilarating. Until Christmas morning that is, when the surprise and anticipation was completely ruined and the one day of the year you spent the other 364 looking forward to was anti-climactic as a result. That’s how movies are now.
“But it’s fun guessing! I enjoy it!” You probably do, but other than the previous Christmas metaphor, it also creates an enormous possibility for disappointment. How many times have you been disappointed because something didn’t measure up to the (often impossible) expectations all your easter egg hunts and spoiler quests raised? How often have you come away depressed because something couldn’t measure up to your fan fiction?
And it’s leading to a more toxic sub-culture as well. For a slice of people, ruining things for fans has always been a morbid hobby. I’ve told the story of how Avengers: Endgame was spoiled for me until the tale is stale. But here it is again in a nutshell;
I spent the better part of three days dodging spoilers like your friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man dodges bullets because I couldn’t see Endgame the moment it premiered. And I almost made it, until I popped into a completely unrelated message board on a completely unrelated topic and people were throwing spoilers around like candy on Hallowe’en. In all freaking caps, no less.
By the time the lights went out and the popcorn was in my lap, I knew that Black Widow didn’t make it and the heroes used time travel to un-do Thanos’ genocidal snap. And I was by far not the only one. When I shared this particular tale with one of the ushers at the theatre, he revealed that people in the message board for his gym were sharing spoilers the night Endgame premiered. No warning. No apology. Just here, let me ruin something you were looking forward to for the past year.
A co-worker told me that she had managed to avoid spoilers for weeks before finally getting into a theatre to see Endgame. But just before the lights went down, someone in the font row stood up, turned around and shouted that Tony Stark died. And then smugly walked out with a smirk on his face. Yep, he bought a ticket just to ruin it for a theatre full of strangers. And it made him happy.
There’s always going to be that bitter, spiteful portion of our society (and if the last two years have taught us anything, that percentage of our society is considerably bigger than we thought it was. Good times). But there’s something more insidious that has grown beside it. And it’s a two headed beast.
The first is the normalization of spoiler culture. While I managed to avoid the same fate with Spider-Man: No Way Home; the second I got home and logged onto Youtube there was a video on the homepage blatantly spoiling the movie’s big surprise. Days before The Batman hit theatres, social media was clogged with hundreds of headlines, stories and videos giving away details and ruining the ending. A few days after it came out, well good luck not having it ruined for you. Whenever Disney drops a new episode of a Marvel or Star Wars show, the Internet is full of both people and organizations dissecting it and spoiling it for anyone who couldn’t watch it at 5 AM.
When the final episode of DC’s Peacemaker dropped, there were videos giving away the ending hours before most people could see it. And don’t dare miss an episode of whatever Star Trek show is on at the moment, because Facebook and Twitter are full of spoilers the second the end credits roll. When you raise the prospect that rabid fans are spoiling the show for people who haven’t seen it yet, the offenders do little more than shrug their virtual shoulders and utter some word salad that basically translates into “I don’t care.”
Even popular fans sites have taken to tossing spoilers around in the titles of stories on stuff that is still days away or just opened. Remember when we used to get spoiler alerts before reading sensitive material? Those were the days.
The Internet has become a minefield of shattered dreams and wasted joy as a result.
But there’s also a growing slice of the fandom pie that we can’t ignore. The slice that takes personal insult to studios and film makers daring to keep secrets from them to begin with. Creators have taken great pains to keep secrets from over eager fans, to make sure there’s still something that can surprise audiences and make them feel better about buying tickets. Think Luke Skywalker showing up in the last episode of The Mandlorian. Or Ezra. Miller’s movie Flash showing up in the CW show. But some fans are taking those secrets and the effort behind them as personal insults.
“Tobey McGuire and Andrew Garfield weren’t honest about their roles in Now Way Home? John Cena didn’t tell us about those cameos in Peacemaker? How. Dare. They.” Believe it or not, there are fans out there who take the tongue-in-cheek dance actors and directors do to protect their secrets personally, labeling them liars and devoting an alarming number of waking moments to ruining the movie for as many other people as possible.
In a world where some fans bullied Warner Bros. into releasing a director’s cut of Justice League and tried to convince everyone that Disney was buying all the tickets to Captain Marvel (implying it’s box office success was a conspiracy between Disney, Marvel and the tyrannical forces of womankind), are you surprised?
So maybe it’s time to take a step back, take a breath and just live our lives until all our favourite stuff comes out. Let yourself be surprised, enjoy the moment and savour the anticipation. Like kids soaking up the gift anxiety for the eight weeks or so before Santa’s big night. Your life won’t be worse if Dr. Strange surprises you a few times. Not knowing how the third season of The Boys or the Obi Wan Kenobi shows end won’t ruin your world. Trust me, quality surprise endings are more fun than searching for spoilers. As a collective fandom, maybe it’s time we relaxed a little.
Like any kid will tell you the day after Christmas, the buildup makes the discovery sweeter.
