Welcome back to Hawkins, Indiana, where the air is no longer wistful, but full of regret.
The science-fiction-horror show-turned international sensation Stranger Things has returned for a third season, and with the nostalgia, terrors, and relationships fans have come to love, it only halfway delivers.
Note: Spoilers follow.
The show’s young stars have come a long way since 2016, when Will first got lost in the Upside Down. Make that 1983. Now it’s 2019 — er, 1985 — and Dustin, El, Lucas, Mike, Max, and Will aren’t the same middle schoolers we met before. They’re learning about themselves and falling in love and growing apart. You might expect that the season, which opens with Dustin returning from a month-long summer camp, worrying that he’s been forgotten, would end with the squad reuniting for good. Instead, El and Will move away.
It’s a sadly fitting metaphor for the third season, which seems to have grown up a little too much. The trailer featured The Who’s “Baba O’Riley,” which indicated that the show would teach us something of “teenage wasteland.” Instead, the characters have much strife but little angst, seemingly stuck in contrived personal conflicts that serve only to advance the plot.
El and Mike break up, giving us the line that will remain in the hearts of feminists and fangirls forever: “I dump your ass.” Will remains the perennially beleaguered martyr whose only purpose is to feel chills down his spine when the monster arrives and to remind viewers that the kids are growing up because they no longer want to play Dungeons & Dragons.
Before I go any further, I should mention that I’ve loved Stranger Things since the beginning, and there was nothing about the third season that stopped me from binge-ing the whole thing as soon as possible. But for old fans, the third season is satisfying, and nothing more.
In some ways, the show feels more 2019 than 1985, and that’s not totally a bad thing. In this season, the (young) female leads shine. The boys and even Joyce take a backseat to El, Max, Nancy, newcomer Robin, and sort-of newcomer Erica.
El learns to embrace her own personality (and fantastic ’80s style) with the help of Max, and Nancy battles sexist bosses who won’t let her do real journalism, although their real motives turn out to be more sinister. Robin cracks a secret Russian code that Dustin and Steve have been trying to decipher, and Erica steals the whole season with her quippy one-liners. She’s also a patriot: “You can’t spell America without Erica.”
Later, before extolling the benefits of capitalism, Erica tells Dustin, “Ooh, I just got the chills! Oh yeah, from this float, not your speech.”
In Season Three’s defense, it avoids the pitfall of Season Two, in which a filler episode (in which El travels to Chicago) strayed from the show’s entire plot and tone — although who knows, perhaps we’ll see more of “Eight” (Kali) in the future. This season at least feels cohesive, even if it meanders through relationship dynamics that are less fulfilling than in the past. Nancy has a sweet moment with her mother, but Joyce is largely absent from her family, which had defined her character in past seasons. And Hopper is just a grumpy dad, right up to the end.
If the first season won fans with its nostalgia for the 1980s and childhood bike rides, Season Three keeps them with nostalgia for Season One. It delivers most of the elements you’d expect: a shot of El sitting in front of a fridge full of Eggo waffles, Mr. Clarke explaining scientific phenomena, and characters arguing about whether or not they’re nerds.
It also includes some duds you wouldn’t expect. There’s an almost minute-long commercial for New Coke (which famously bombed) in episode seven. Even if the show’s partnership with Coca-Cola (and possibly other brands such as 7-Eleven and M&M’s) may have brought in revenue, it doesn’t dispel the feeling that Stranger Things is selling out. (Then again, even the flagrant product placement hearkens back to such 1980s classics as E.T. and Back to the Future, does it not?)
According to show creators the Duffer brothers, Season Four is in the works, though a release date hasn’t been announced yet. With its cliffhanger ending (Is Hopper alive, languishing in a Russian prison? What will happen after the Byers family leaves town?), the show deserves a Fourth Season. But that should (and probably will) be its last.
Stranger Things has aged, and it has aged with its growing cast, which is an impressive feat. But it misses some of the spark that it began with, when you weren’t sure whether the danger was scientific or supernatural, and conflicts between characters eventually drove them together, instead of artificially pushing them apart.
Unless it finds a new ethos, the show cannot exist without its foundations: Castle Byers, Dungeons & Dragons, friends who are only a walkie-talkie call away.
Stranger Things may continue, but it’s quickly growing old.
