STRANGER THINGS (Season 3)

Stranger Things Season 3 Review

Just as I did when I reviewed Season Two of Stranger Things, I'm going to start my Season Three review with a WARNING: this WILL contain spoilers from all three seasons of the show. Proceed with caution.

Take your time. We'll wait

Hey, you're still here, so let us continue. Having closed the gate on the Mind Flayer and enjoyed a lovely school dance at the end of Season Two, we fast-forward through the rest of the school year and catch up with our heroes at the end of June, 1985. All the rage in Hawkins is the new mall, which has devastated the small businesses in the downtown area. 

Rad

Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) are now a couple, which is annoying Hopper (David Harbour) to no end. Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are dating and interning at the local newspaper. Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) are still a couple. Joyce (Winona Ryder) is trying to get over the death of Bob (Sean Astin). Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is just back in town after spending some time at a camp--he doesn't have teeth again, and allegedly has a girlfriend named Suzie, who he proclaims to be "hotter than Phoebe Cates". 

In case you have no idea who Phoebe Cates is (I'm looking at you, Sani)

Steve (Joe Keery) has put off going to college to work in the mall--at Scoops Ahoy, to be exact--and realizes that now that he's just a guy scooping ice cream and not the most popular boy in school, he's no longer the chick magnet he once was--his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke, the real-life daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman) is there to remind him of this constantly. Will (Noah Schnapp) is getting somewhat back to normal. Finally, Billy (Dacre Montgomery) is now a lifeguard, and the subject of a lot of gawking from middle-aged women who apparently have nothing better to do with their days than hang out at the pool and creep on a teenage boy.

He still has the hood hair

All seems well, but as we saw during the final scene of the second season, there's still an ominous creature in the Upside Down hanging over Hawkins--if that's not bad enough, the opening scene in Season Three shows us the Russians have developed a technology they are using to attempt to force open a portal into the Upside Down. 

It could use some tweaking

Honestly, it kind of takes Season Three a while to get going. Most of the first three episodes are spent laying the groundwork for what is to come--this is to be expected, of course, but what may catch you off guard in these three episodes is the sheer amount of comedy and lack of thrills. Midway through the third episode I was wondering to myself if they switched gears to make this show strictly a comedy--I know there is a lot of funny stuff in the first two seasons, which I do love, but there was always a strong balance between the comedy, tragedy, and scares--this balance is missing in the first three episodes this season. That said, when things do come together, the season really takes off. Joyce, Hopper, and a Russian they capture are trying to figure out what exactly the Russians are doing and how to stop them. Steve, Robin, and Dustin (later joined by Erica, Lucas' little sister) have cracked the Russian code and discover their lab. Meanwhile, Jonathan, Nancy, and the remaining kids are busy trying to fight off a now-possessed Billy, who was dragged into the Upside-Down and put under a spell by the Mind Flayer (or Shadow Monster, whatever you prefer). Billy is not just coming after Eleven, however--he is helping possess other people as the Mind Flayer seemingly is building an army to make itself more powerful--and the way this is done is rather gross and awesome. 

He won't be easy to stop

It is somewhat weird seeing the main characters split up like this--for the second straight season, Dustin is taken away from the rest of his friends and put with Steve, so we seldom see the four best friends together--that said, the focus was taken off Dustin a little more than it was in Season Two, so that's a welcomed change. On the flip side, we see a lot more of Murray (Brett Gelman) than we did in Season Two, and his pairing with Russian Dr. Alexei (Alec Utgoff) is very...bizarre. Both characters are decent side comedic characters, best used in the background and for a short period, but they are front and center far too much here. All the fun stuff we loved about the first two seasons of Stranger Things is still here, from the character development and interactions to the monsters to the 1980's references--when the opening showed us this takes place in the summer of 1985, I told my girlfriend that is when Back to the Future was released--I wondered if that would be incorporated, and boy, was it ever! I was thrilled when Season Two had a bit involving Ghostbusters, my all-time favorite movie, and I was equally as excited when Season Three showcased my second favorite movie of all-time, Back to the Future. Also featured prominently in this season is one of the biggest flop or greatest marketing strategies (depending on how you look at it) the country has ever seen--New Coke. In a hilarious exchange, two of the characters go back and forth on if New Coke is better than Coke.

These guys both seem to like it

We get the eighties music here, of course, but that takes a drastic drop on the coolness scale--we've gone from Joy Division and The Clash in Season One to a lot of Journey songs this season--okay, they may not all be Journey songs, but during the early to mid 1980's there was about a dozen or so bands that all sounded the same, and I hate all of it--Journey is one of those bands, so if I don't know who the actual band is, I just assume it's Journey and don't waste any more time thinking about it. Anyway, we get a whole lot of that music this season. Eleven seemingly sways with the music--she goes from her dark wave outfit of Season Two to sporting the mall chick look in Season Three. 

Complete with glamour shots

TONS of credit has to go to the authentic feel of this show. If you were alive then and remember the 1980's, you can easily watch this show and believe it could have actually come directly from that decade. The introduction of the mall in the small town was a wonderful touch this season, and whoever was in charge of wardrobe nailed it. The small town feel is also captured nicely here. Season Two made me miss living in a small town during Fall, and Season Three did the same with summer, particularly during the 4th of July celebration. What made this even cooler was the fact this season was released on July fourth, and as we were watching the scenes of the 4th of July festival unfolding on our television, we could see and hear actual fireworks going off outside our place.

Gravitron is in there somewhere

After the third episode, the pace of this season is spectacular, but there are some shortcomings. Cary Elwes (Saw) is brought on as crooked mayor Larry Kline, but is seldom seen, and Jake Busey (The Stoned Age) is grossly misused. Busey is the kind of actor who can really steal the show, but he's cast here as an uninteresting, one-dimensional character that is, when all is said and done, barely a blip on the Stranger Things radar. Erica is an irritating character that is not likable in the least. I told my girlfriend the next time I watch this season, I will likely just fast forward through every scene she's involved in--she's really that bad, which is in stark contrast to her brother, Lucas, who is my favorite of the four boys. There are a few eye-rolling scenes, the worst of which is the Neverending Story bit with Dustin that was painfully bad and seemed to be, in fact, never ending. The teasing of the seemingly inevitable relationship between Hopper and Joyce gets to be a bit much too, though the conclusion of that story is rather shocking.

We were all surprised

This all leads to a conclusion that is exceptionally well done. The final showdown with the Mind Flayer is intense and scary at times, and the sacrifices it took to overcome the evil will leave many jaws dropped. FINAL WARNING: I'm about to go full-blown end of the season spoiler here, so if you have not seen this season yet and don't want it spoiled, check out now.

Or stay, and have a cookie

Eleven digs way down to find some good in Billy to bring him back from the spell he is under, and he pays her back by sacrificing himself to save her--we also learn that Max did care a lot more for her step-brother than she let us know. Hopper, in the meantime, gives his life to save the day, leaving Eleven to be raised by Joyce, who sells her house and moves her family out of Hawkins at the end. I don't know for certain Season Three was the final one for Stranger Things, but it at least felt like it was. When I reviewed Season Two, I speculated that the end scene of the boys dancing with girls may indicate they are about to grow apart, and this is confirmed to an extent during this season--Will doesn't want to let the days of spending all day in the basement playing Dungeons and Dragons go, but Lucas and Mike let him know girls are more important now--Will responds by destroying the castle he and his brother built, and, in the end, giving away his Dungeons & Dragons game. We also get an emotional scene of Eleven reading a speech Hopper wrote but never gave her, acknowledging she was growing up and he didn't know how to handle it. So in our (sort of) final scene, we have the Byers family and El saying goodbye to the rest of the group and moving on--this reminded me a lot of the friends in Stand By Me saying so long before we hear about how they grew apart, and this all felt like a fitting end to this series. 

The final goodbye?

I really, really do not want them to keep this show going until it gets bad. As the central characters--the kids--age, the dynamic of the group weakens--do we really want to see Eleven as prom queen, or Jonathan and Nancy have children, or Steve becoming the manager at Scoops Ahoy while developing a receding hairline? 

Don't panic Steve

So we've wrapped up this season perfectly, right? Well, not quite. A bit into the final credits, we get a bonus scene of a prisoner in Russia coming face to face with a Demogorgon, implying the battle with the evils from the Upside Down are not over. I don't know if this is leading to a fourth season, a spin-off, or possibly nothing at all, but for as cool as the scene was, I kind of wish it wasn't there--still, it will keep us guessing for a while, so that's fun. I will say this about a potential fourth season--if it does happen, with Bob and Hopper now out of the picture, I would be absolutely besides myself with happiness if Christian Slater was brought in to play Joyce's newest love interest.

Who WOULDN'T want to see this couple again?

The third season of Stranger Things was very impressive--it may have been a small step down from the second season, but ultimately it is an extremely entertaining season that is a lot of fun to watch, and one that continues the awesomeness of the first two seasons wonderfully.

On A Scale Of One To Ten: 7

Stranger Things Season 3 Trailer