Spoilers? Yeah, it’s all spoilers so don’t read if you haven’t seen the whole season.

My love for season three of Stranger Things is tempered a bit by the fact that I had to watch it again to figure out what the hell actually happened. Granted, I’m particularly inept at absorbing the details of alternate realities. Hell, I’ve seen every Marvel Universe movie except the latest Spiderman and I still don’t know what the Tesseract is. So, my confusion at plot points in no way indicates poor writing.

The Heartache of Season Three

This show started in 2016 and now it’s 2019 so we actually watched these actors grow into adolescents, Boyhood style.

Adolescence ached for me. It was an ache that was so strong because I didn’t even know what I was aching for. Pre-high school, when a slow dance or a kiss meant everything. It’s not innocence, either. It’s exciting and devastating. (See also: Lucas featuring Stranger Things’ Winona Ryder in her first movie role.)

I loved the opening of the series (after a quick scene with Russians, but we’ll get to that) with El and Mike kissing to Cory Hart. The details aren’t the same but it’s recognizable.

The truth is, I never had a girlfriend like that. I had the kind where we agreed that we were going out and then I was too scared to speak to her in the halls and after a set amount of time, I got a note saying we weren’t dating anymore.* So, I identified with Will.

* I bumped into her last month by the Barclays Center with her toddler and baby. She looks well.

I was the Will of my friend group. I knew I liked girls but had no idea what to do about it or maybe I wasn’t ready to. Maybe I just wanted to play more D&D.* There’s a feeling of being left behind.

* I never played D&D but whatever, watch Back to the Future or the 1990 World Cup semi-final between England and West Germany on VHS for the four hundredth time. Same thing.

I almost cried when Will took a bat to Castle Byers (his backyard fort). The way he looked at his old pictures and cried saying “so stupid.” It broke my heart.

A lot of people didn’t like the rivalry between Max and El in season two, so, I loved their friendship this season. And of course it would feature and 80’s mall shopping montage.

When Hopper and Joyce planned that second date at Enzo’s, I should have known that one of them was a goner. It was too perfect for them to actually get together and live happily ever after. The look Hopper gives her to let her know that it’s okay to blow up that laser broke my heart.

Hopper’s message from beyond to El was just lovely, especially ending it with keep the door open three inches.

“Mike… I love you too.” You didn’t cry at that? Not even a little. Check your pulse, asshole.

I can’t believe that Joyce, Jonathan, and Will actually moved, along with El. Everything will change. They made plans to meet for Thanksgiving and Christmas but those months are so long to kids that age. They’ll write for a while but eventually school will take their attention and the frequency of the letters will dwindle and stop. New kids will come to town. Friendships will end. One of them will get really popular and one of them will turn into a stoner and one of them will continue to do all the science club stuff and they’ll sign each other’s yearbooks senior year and think, “damn, we were tight in seventh grade, isn’t that funny?” They’ll move on to college and forget about each other unless they run into each other at the local bar during Thanksgiving. And then, when they’re around thirty (I’m guessing these kids were born in ’72), they’ll reconnect on Facebook. But it’ll never be like it was.

And that breaks my heart (Again! Yes, I had my heart broken many times this season and it was wonderful! Christ, what are you, made of stone?)

The growth of the characters made this season for me. As for the rest of it…

The Plot

Okay, so, the Russians were trying to open the gate in Russia but it didn’t work so the Russian killer guy killed the top scientist then the top brass Russian guy turned to the second scientist and said “you have one year.”

So, in that year, they got to the mayor of Hawkins (how does Cary Elwes play such douchebags after playing Wesley? See also: Kiss the Girls and Liar, Liar) to give them land to build a mall but unbeknownst to him it’s a cover for a secret underground lair to re-open the Hawkins Gate which was closed by El in season two. So, the Russians build this vast underground lair with several other underground lairs one of which was under the Hess farm and they do all that in a year? Also, they develop a route to deliver the green super fluid that powers the super laser to open the Gate, also in a year?

Why is the code necessary? “The silver cat something someting… a trip to China would be nice if you tread lightly when the blue and yellow meet in the West.” The Russians know it’s in the mall. The Russians that those Russians are talking to know it’s in the mall. Seems kind of sloppy to have to relay that message at all.

And why the hell do the Russians want to open the Gate? What good would that do them?

So, the Gate gets opened a crack allowing the Mind Flayer (is that the name of the monster? I guess I wasn’t paying attention in season 2) to start its plan to build a guts monster to kill El by first possessing rats to eat fertilizer and chemicals and run to the steel plant and explode and then assemble like a guts version of Terminator 2. Then, once the rat guts are big enough, it’s time to move on to humans.

Enter Billy (not Will this time because Will’s been through enough, dammit, though he does sense it because once you’ve been mind frayed you’re never really the same, am I right?). After crashing his car, getting converted in the basement of the factory, and briefly being in the upside down he becomes one with the Mind Flayer and continues the project of building the guts monster. He’s seen drinking chemicals at the public pool where he’s a lifeguard but for some reason he never turns to guts.

He starts a guts monster pyramid scheme with another lifeguard Heather. Then they move on to Heather’s parents. (Also the elder lady Mrs. Driscoll gets turned by a rat in her house that turns to rat guts? I know it wasn’t Billy or Heather…)

Then pretty soon we have a little guts monster zombie apocalypse on our hands. Briefly, and I mean for one episode (episode five with Heather’s dad and Gary Busey Jr. in the hospital), pain caused to one possessed human affects another possessed human, then that doesn’t come up again.

All the human who have ingested chemicals ‘n stuff turn to goo to assemble the giant monster. Then the monster can go and kill El.

Also, magnets don’t work.

Did I get that right?

I’m not asking that sarcastically, I need to know.

Billy really didn’t have much to do this season. Yeah, he was the main antoganist but he was really a cypher which sucks because he seemed like a dynamic character who could have been explored for a few seasons. We see it briefly in El’s flahsback but that’s not enough. There could have been more payoff to his character.

I definitely thought throughout that El was using her powers too much and now she seems to have lost them altogether. I’m glad that there’s going to be a season four.

Miscellaneous Observations

I loved all the New Coke references, especially Lucas’s brief monologue about its superiority to original Coke.

Actual thought during season three: “Planck’s constant? Jesus, just google it… Oh yeah…”

The Neverending Story should not be shown to children. The Nothing is very clearly a metaphor for clinical depression and it reduced me to tears as a child. Loved the rendition of the theme song, though.

Sassy little sister? It’s been done. Sassy future libertarian little sister? Nice twist, Duffer Brothers.

The Russian who loves America once he’s defected? Also been done. Still funny. Russians eating Whoppers and watching Looney Tunes is funny and always will be. Sorry, I don’t make the rules.

In 1994, Winona Ryder was in Reality Bites with Ethan Hawke. In 2019, she’s in Stranger Things with his daughter Maya (though they had no scenes together). I just thought that was cool.

Once I googled Maya Hawke and saw that she’s Uma Thurman’s daughter, it was hard not to hear Uma Thurman’s voice every time she spoke. Just me?

When Joyce goes to see Mr. Clark, I thought they were playing some off-brand version of “My Sharona” for some reason. How the hell could they get the rights to “Material Girl” but not to “My Sharona”? Well, it’s actually “My Bologna” by Weird Al, which is exactly what the middle school science teacher would be listening to in his garage while painting figurines. Chef kiss to that choice, Duffer Brothers.

The Duffer Brothers were born in 1984. How did they get so much right?

The Post Credits Scene

Cut to Siberia (not sure if it’s Siberia but it’s Russia, it’s cold, let’s just call it Siberia). We’re in a prison. Two guards are getting someone from a solitary confinement cell to probably kill them because why else would Russian prison guards retrieve someone from a solitary confinement cell?

They go to the first door and one guard says to the other, “No, not the American.” They go to the next cell and get a guy to be killed by the season one Demogorgon (right? that’s what that was?).

“The American.” We all think it’s Hopper. I want it to be Hopper. I really do. But let’s face it, if it is Hopper, they’d better justify the shit out of it or that’s a shark-jumping move. Everyone near that explosion was obliterated. I’d rather a dead Hopper than a poorly justified living Hopper.*

* As of this writing, I haven’t looked at any of the theories about it online.