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Following a successful but heavily criticised second season, Stranger Things has returned to Netflix with a Fourth of July-centered, eight episode-long spectacle which finally finds a fitting balance between its themes of coming-of-age, science fiction and nostalgia. Against a backdrop of growing pains and relationship breakdowns, the Stranger Things gang returns to our screens to fight the Mind Flayer, his brainwashed hosts, and Russian communists.
If Netflix and the Duffer brothers wanted this season to emphasise anything, it is that the series’s young cast and target audience are growing up. Season Three could have made an attempt to avoid this inevitability, but instead directly confronts the matter. The line “We’re not kids anymore” is both spoken and referred to in numerous episodes, but the characters really don’t need to tell us in words that the show’s model, as well as its cast, is maturing. Season three is Stranger Things’ coming-of-age moment. It’s a trope that risks becoming cliché but, instead, is a surprisingly poignant display of both the Duffer Brothers’ ability to write for adolescents and the young casts’ acting range. The theme is most light-hearted when Max (Sadie Sink) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) become mall rats, while Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) comically struggle to understand the girls’ indifference towards them. As the season progresses, this coming-of-age moment becomes inevitably darker. In an incredible performance by Noah Schnapp, Will breaks down over the gang’s growing distance from their childhood antics. However, Stranger Things truly comes of age when newcomer Robin (Maya Hawke) opens up to Steve (Joe Keery) during a heart-to-heart, setting the tone for the show’s future.
Stranger Things’ developing exploration of deeper themes and the characters’ confrontation of heavier issues is especially interesting when considered in a historical context. For a show depicting 1980s adolescenthood, its “woke” characters could be deemed about as realistic as the terrifying mind flayer they battle. Nonetheless, these characters have developed so significantly over the show’s three seasons that, when they are confronted with stigmatised topics, their understanding reaction is appreciated, but not so shocking. The question also has to be asked that if you were a teenager in the 1980s who had visited an ‘underworld’ and befriended a girl with telekinetic powers, would you really be that shocked by the prospect of a world in which women were equal to men or by befriending somebody who wasn’t heterosexual? In comparison to coming-of-age television programmes of the past, Stranger Things educates its young audience without preaching to or speaking down to it. It doesn’t use clichés. Its three-dimensional characters’ consistent growth in their understanding of and empathy for one another in the face of great danger and trauma is highlighted without being romanticised.
What is fascinating about Stranger Things is that there really is something for everyone. The series covers a variety of genres; from science fiction to coming-of-age to comedy. There are plenty of sentimental moments to please fans of drama. Equally, there are enough comedic one-liners to cleanse the palette of those who have difficulty watching the season’s intense, emotional scenes. There’s enough nostalgia to entice anyone who can remember the 1980s, while the show’s rosy recalling of the past will make younger viewers wish they were a teenager during the decade of mall rats and perms. The series’ no-holds-barred soundtrack is bound to satisfy music fans and any art enthusiast can appreciate the lighting, set design, cinematography and costumes. The show’s peppering of references to sci-fi and cinema of the past are so subtle that cinephiles will relish every one of the series’ ‘Easter eggs’. As a whole, Stranger Things Three covers a vast amount of ground in terms of themes and narratives, but artfully avoids spreading itself too thin.
