David Harbour leaked Black Widow photos to prevent Marvel and Stranger Things crossover theories

Harbour didn’t want fans reading too much into the casting news

David Harbour revealed that he purposefully leaked photos from the Black Widow set in order to prevent Stranger Things crossover theories.

Harbour, who is set to star in the forthcoming Marvel film as Red Guardian, appeared as a guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlierthis week.

Fans last saw the actor in his role as Chief Hopper in Stranger Things’s third season. The dramatic series finale saw Hopper in a Russian prison cell. Coincidentally, audiences will also meet his Black Widow character in a Russian prison.

Harbour told Kimmel that he finished shooting Stranger Things in 2019 and “literally a month later” received a call from Marvel asking him to “play a guy who starts out in a Russian prison”.

The 46-year-old went on to say that he knew fans would likely read too much into the news, suspecting that the casting was more than just a coincidence.

In order to avoid endless fan theories, the actor leaked images from Black Widow’s set to Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer so that “they didn’t use any of the same colours as the set and making sure the looks were different and the outfits were different” on the forthcoming season of the Netflix hit.

Harbour continued to explain that his role in Black Widow contributed to deciding Hopper’s look in the next season of Stranger Things, in which he is seen with a shaved head.

“At the end [of shooting Black Widow], I had all this hair and all this beard and we had planned to do it that way. And I was like, ‘Guys, we can’t do this. I mean I’m coming out with this Marvel movie, I can’t have the beard and the hair,’” said the actor.

“So we came up with a whole different look for it.”

Black Widow is slated for release on 9 July, while a release date for Stranger Things season four is yet to be announced.