Review: Stranger Things 3

Just in case you have not heard enough about Stranger Things 3, you’ll be delighted in my review.

If you’ve heard way too much about the third season of the Netflix Original science fiction/horror,young adult series that premiered on July 4, 2019, don’t worry. My review is short.

Plot of ST3

It’s 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and the new Starcourt Mall has opened, delighting shoppers but driving local business into bankruptcy.

Sheriff Hopper is trying to cope with having a teenage daughter in the person of Eleven and the raging hormones between her and Mike.

Like before, Joyce Byers seems to be the first to take note of the strange power fluctuations.. Her son Will notices but says nothing at first.

Some of the kids are trying to solve a mystery beneath the mall. Others are focused on the weird behavior of some of the citizens, and the older kids are learning that being adults can be difficult.

My Thoughts

Stranger Things is a love letter to the 1980s. That’s evident in the music, the movie posters on the walls of the kids’ rooms, and the homage to movies too.

You’ll get glimpses of Die Hard, War Games, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Empire Strikes Back, and more. My goodness, there are even scenes in a movie theater with Back to the Future playing in the background. Then there’s small town American culture as well as the free world’s Cold War enemies.

The pressing questions of will Steve get a girlfriend and will Dustin get a girlfriend are answered. Will Joyce and Hop get together? Will Jonathan and Nancy stay together? Will Billie keep being a psycho jerk? Will the portal remain closed?

All in all, it was a good ST3, but ST1 and 2 are still my favorites. It’s hard to come up with fresh conflicts when there’s such a huge following for a series, and you have to top what happened the last 2 seasons.

So, the answer, I guess, was to throw everything but the kitchen sink into ST3.

If you were royally ticked off by the way the last episode ended and you hit stop when the credits started rolling, then you missed the sneaky epilogue.

I was pleased by it and irritated too. Why? Because I have to wait another long year to see how the Duffer Brothers pull a rabbit from a hat with Stranger Things 4. Everyone I know is wondering what holiday will be involved in the next season.

Takeaway Truth

If you haven’t seen Stranger Things yet, you’re missing a great series.