Stranger Things Season 3 Really Lives Up To Its Name
The third season of the Netflix series Stranger Things is perhaps the tightest written, the fastest paced and most exciting yet. The homages to staples of 1980s pop culture and particularly movies are even more evident this time around, and some of the characters undergo noticeable growth throughout the season. Of course, it isn’t perfect and I’ll mention a few problems I have with Season 3 later on, all while keeping this review free of spoilers except for events that happened in past seasons.
Let’s talk about those homages: In a sea of movie references, the biggest influences on Season 1 are Stand By Me, Carrie and of course, E.T. The Extraterrestrial. Season 2’s strongest influences are Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters 2, The Goonies and Gremlins. Season 3 draws heavily from the body horror and gore of John Carpenter’s The Thing, and from The Terminator with some Rocky IV thrown in. That reliance on emulating The Thing means Season 3 is probably the most visually disturbing of all seasons so far.
Season 3 is also the most unbelievable so far. The main human antagonist group and what they accomplish stretches credulity almost as much as a demogorgon coming from an alternate dimension called the Upside-Down. But I didn’t let that stop me from enjoying the story, because this series has worn its wild fantasy and horror mantle proudly all along.
The returning cast is still strong, and the newcomers are wonderful additions to the not-the-Scooby-Gang. Priah Ferguson is excellent as Erica Sinclair, Lucas’s wise-ass-beyond-her-years 10-year-old sister. And Steve’s Scoops Ahoy co-worker Robin is a much needed blast of realistic smart-assery and humor in a series that too often relies on the nerd jokes. Robin is played by Maya Hawke, aka Maya Thurman-Hawke, the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke. Her parentage shows, as she is clearly a natural actor.
This season manages to miss the momentum-stopping road trip that Eleven went on last season, making the flow and pacing much better. While that trip helped with Eleven’s character growth, I imagine there must have been a better way to accomplish that. One of the best indicators of her growth as a character is that everyone in Season 3 almost always calls her “El,” not “Eleven.” She has become a person separate from her background and abilities, and Millie Bobby Brown does a good job moving her forward while still having her miss some of the simpler social niceties all of the other kids know by heart.
The quibbles
That leads to one of my few complaints — the original gang of four of Mike, Will, Lucas and Dustin have hardly evolved as characters since Season 1. That is shown plainly in the fact that their styles haven’t changed at all. Mike still has that ridiculous shag haircut, Will still has his bowl cut and dresses like a refugee from a 1970s summer band camp. This season is set in 1985, and in the small town in Maine I lived in at the time, every teenage boy had either a boys regular, a mullet, a New Romantics cut a la Spandau Ballet or a headbanger’s long hair. Even the nerds rocked those styles, and as one, I would know (I was in my mid-20s, but rocked the Spandau Ballet in case you were wondering).
Someone is going to say the various romances that are part of the boys’ lives now are a sign of character growth, but they are nothing but window dressing. Take them out and neither the plot nor the characters’ actions change at all. OK, that was kind of spoilery, but, hey, no details and they are teenagers now, so what did you expect?
My other problem has to do with the big finale and some consistency and logic problems in that, but I would have to go into spoilers to detail those. I’ll just say that like the incredulous actions of the human antagonists mentioned above, those problems were barely a road bump in the breakneck excitement of the last two episodes.
As a whole, I give Stranger Things 3 a 4.5 out of 5. I won’t say if the show gives us any hint that a Season 4 might happen, but if it does, I wonder what holiday they would pick? We already had Christmas, Halloween and now Independence Day — can Arbor Day be next?
