Stranger Things Season 3
Overview
It's the summer of 1985, the Starcourt Mall just opened, and Hawkins has never looked this good right before everything goes wrong. Season 3 is the show in its brightest colors: Eleven and Max on a shopping spree, Hopper losing his mind over Mike's visits and his own feelings for Joyce, and Steve Harrington — demoted to scooping ice cream in a sailor uniform — stumbling into the season's best team-up with Robin, played by Maya Hawke, who slides into the cast like she'd always been there. Underneath the neon, rats are exploding, people are melting into one very large problem, and some Russians have built something under the food court. This is the most horror-forward season to that point, full body horror by the finale, and the Fourth of July battle at Starcourt is the biggest set piece the show had attempted. It's also the season that breaks your heart at the end, with a letter read aloud that had half the internet crying in the summer of 2019. Some fans find the comedy broader here, the villains thinner. Maybe. But as pure summer-blockbuster television — confident, loud, sneakily emotional — this is Stranger Things at its most fun.
