The ‘NeverEnding Story’ of season 3 from Stranger Things gives us the 80s vibe to full e

Eleven got to spend some more time with the kids during Stranger Things 3, and the show was better for it. Photo: All Images (Netflix)

It’s 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and summer’s heating up. School’s out, there’s a brand new mall in town, and the Hawkins crew are on the cusp of adulthood. Romance blossoms and complicates the group’s dynamic, and they’ll have to figure out how to grow up without growing apart

The third season of Stranger Things is here and, if you’re like us, you spent most of last weekend glued to your TV, desperate to know what’s next for Eleven and her crew of teens from small-town Hawkins are up to.

Season 1 was an overwhelming commercial success, season 2 didn’t quite hit the same heights, but Stranger Things is back on form.

The good news: Season 3 is potentially the best one yet.

With a tighter, slightly shorter run of eight episodes that manage to tap every emotional vein of Culturedemandsgeeks childhood (even for those who didn’t grow up in the ’80s) while leaking more monsters from the Upside Down, season 3 is a roller coaster that never lets up.

As with the two previous seasons, a threat looms from the murky and generic science-lab world.

Men in white coats have ill-advised designs on the small town of Hawkins and along with a host of Russians and an evil-doer in the Mayor too…

Meanwhile, those who remember the lasting shot of the second season will know that the gigantic spider-like Mind Flayer remains trapped but intact in the Upside Down.

While it threatens the poor people of Hawkins yet again, Billy, our favorite mullet-sporting bully, does what he does best: Terrorize his sister and her friends while looking cool.

As season 3 kicks off, In Hawkins, we are now up to 1985. The gang’s hormones are making themselves felt, and El appears to be on shaky ground.

Her world largely revolves around being Mike’s girlfriend: The boy and the sense of home he provides, which she tried so desperately to return to throughout season 2.

Now their constant kissing causes Hopper deep disdain. Swiftly and for the better, though, her world opens up, along with a new shopping mall setting that seems to be an overflowing gateway to ’80s references.

El and Max form a welcome friendship.

Will periodically senses the beastie’s presence, but his main cause of unhappiness is his friends’ rejection of their old world of dens in the woods and Dungeons and Dragons campaigns for the world of girlfriends.

While Lucas and Max are still together (though their relationship takes a backseat – possibly in response to the story of how the kiss was sprung rather unexpectedly on Sadie Sink by the directors), Mike and Eleven alternate between kissing and breaking up, and Dustin has – if we give him the benefit of the doubt – a girlfriend from science camp who lives in Utah.

The friendship with Steve Harrington what was a delight of last season continues and is even improved by the addition of his co-worker at the ice-cream parlour, Robin (Maya Hawke). Together, they pursue the B-plot, involving Russians and mysterious boxes in a mysterious room in the new mall that is putting the high street out of business.

We’re all seasoned veterans by now, of course. The Demogorgon transformed into the Mind Flayer in Season 2, and in Season 3 the same villain, once again transformed, emerges with help from new mortal allies.

Stranger Things 3 is great because it plays to the series’ strengths and really lets every character (including new ones) shine in ways that I feel like last season struggled with.

Action and terror are perfectly balanced against comic relief and well-timed character moments. There’s been much ado about the kids of Stranger Things “all grown up” now, but that’s nonsense. They’re not the little kids of Season 1, but they’re still very much kids—just kids who’ve recently learned how fun it is to make out.

Stranger Things 3, features a montage of moments from earlier episodes that precipitates nostalgia all on its own. The season has its meticulous attention to period detail; it felt like a show that could have been shot in the 1980s with new coke, details to the mall, and the ‘blink if you miss them moments’ to all those good films which came out at that time period.

As for the older kids, Steve (Joe Keery) is now working alongside Robin (Maya Hawke) at Scoops Ahoy, an ice cream shop at the Starcourt Mall. He’s pretty bummed about going from the cool guy with the good hair to ice cream scooper for spoiled kids, but his relationship with Robin is so fresh that the outcome will leave viewers pleasantly surprised.

While Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) are still together and venturing through a summer job where they quickly learn the differences of being a man and a woman in the workplace in 1985.

We loved…

The focus on all that made Stranger Things great is strong.

The growing up

When you make a show starring young kids, obviously, they are going to grow up as the show goes along.

In the case of Stranger Things 3, this was handled beautifully, giving us stories that felt perfectly age-appropriate for the characters and also completely different from everything we’ve seen in the past.

They’re all, in some way, impacted by young love.

The show dove deeper into the romances of Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and El (Millie Bobby Brown), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink), and Dustin and Suzie (kind of), and provided new perspectives on the subject from other characters. Steve (Joe Keery) finds out the girl he is attracted to is gay.

Will (Noah Schnapp) realizes he hasn’t matured as quickly as his friends and he himself might be gay.

All the other relationships have plenty of ups and downs too, whether it was Mike and El sneaking behind Hopper’s back, Max and El pushing the boys aside, the girl talk, the boy talk, spying, all of the romance added another layer of strong relatability to the characters.

Billy has a big role to play.

Evil Billy

Billy Hargrove didn’t have the best debut in season two, because he wasn’t given anything to do, other than bully his younger sister and eventually get chewed out for it. It was clear that actor Dacre Montgomery was capable of so much more though and we got it with Billy’s turn in season three.

Early on, Billy was possessed by the Mind Flayer and became its main host, sent to recruit more victims to fulfill its dark purpose.

Montgomery nailed Evil Billy’s raw sinisterness, but also managed to give the character vulnerability, depth, and beauty underneath the tragedy.

It was one of the rare times a villain’s noble sacrifice felt like it was actually warranted because Montgomery gave us a reason to see who Billy was under all the layers of trauma and possession. It’s a shame he had to lose his life in the end but ultimately, the sacrifice was the perfect ending to an excellent arc (and we’re sure Dacre will go onto be a lead in another hit show).

CARY ELWES:

Adding to the general sense of bringing back famous actors from past generations, we have new characters which include a corrupt mayor played by star of the 80s cult hit The Princess Bride, Cary Elwes, and a journalist intent on harassing Nancy at her summer job at the Hawkins Post (a local newspaper, children. Time to die) played with relish by Gary Busey’s lookalike son Jake.

THE NEVERENDING STORY:

The finale for Stranger Things 3 has a lot going on, and if you didn’t catch everything that happened, well, you wouldn’t be alone. But one moment that everyone definitely noticed is that Dustin/Suzie rendition of the Neverending Story theme song.

How could we forget? It comes at the most inopportune time: Hopper and Joyce are waiting underground in a secret Russian bunker, desperately in need of the code that will help them get through a locked gate so they can turn off the giant laser machine that’s keeping the portal to the Upside Down open.

There’s one small problem: The code is Planck’s constant, a number that Murray thought he knew and wrote down for the bunker team—but it’s wrong. Nobody else knows what the number is…except for, potentially, Dustin’s mysterious Camp Know Where girlfriend Suzie. All along, everyone thought she was made up, but along she comes, over the radio waves from Salt Lake City. When Dustin gets in touch with her via his giant Cerebro contraption, she’s delighted to hear from her “Dusty-Bun.” (Ew.)

But.

She won’t give the number to him—who cares if the world, and Hopper and Joyce particularly, is waiting—unless he sings Limahl’s “Never Ending Story” (you know, from the movie) with her.

The cliffhanger/ That ending:

What an ending. The Byers are moving? Eleven is going with them? She’s lost her powers? She’s lost her ‘new’ dad, too! But is Hopper still alive and in a Russian prison? The freaking Demogorgon is back? The final few minutes of, somewhere, captured and transported at the end of the last episode?

Stranger Things 3 packed enough surprises in for a whole other season. And, well, they’re gonna have one to try and explain how that all plays out.

The last episode has left fans of the blockbuster Netflix series buzzing over the fate of David Harbour’s police chief Jim Hopper.

The beloved character was seemingly killed off in the season finale when he decided to sacrifice himself in order to close the gate between the Upside Down and the real world.

However, Hopper’s death was called into question during a mid-credits scene set in Russia where the existence of an imprisoned American in a Russian jail sell was revealed.

Many fans think the American is Hopper, and now one of the biggest conversations about “Stranger Things” moving forward is Hopper’s definitive fate.

But what we do know, that machine went off and blew up and Hopper seemed to be trapped there. He did glance around a little bit, but he seemed to be trapped and the machine exploded.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

Stranger Things 3 works marvelously well for a story that continues to return to the same central conflict, delving deep into the characters—a wise move, considering it’s really these characters we show up for first and foremost, even more so than the conflict with the Upside Down and its evil, monstrous citizens.

It’s a smart return to form for creators the Duffer Brothers, despite a creeping yet evident strain on upping the terrors for the kids of Hawkins, Indiana. And sure, Stranger Things 3 has its share of violence and grotesquery, but in many ways, these take a back seat to the humor and the humanity of the cast.

But after an already satisfying ending with the crew saving the world once again, it was awesome to see how the consequences of this season may loom larger moving ahead. We haven’t seen the last of the Upside Down.

Plus, the promise of action outside of Hawkins may bring Stranger Things to a whole other level of epic.

We can’t wait to see how it plays out.

5/5 STARS