‘Stranger’ twists, turns in Season 3

It’s going to be an explosive Fourth of July for fans of “Stranger Things.”

The premiere date for the long-awaited third season of the hit Netflix sci-fi show was finally announced as July 4 — a whopping year and nine months after Season 2 kicked off Oct. 27, 2017.

In an interesting twist, the spooky series that follows a group of young friends as both real-life and supernatural forces wreak havoc on their fictional town of Hawkins, Ind., will be set during the summer this time as opposed to fall and winter like the past two seasons.

The trailer for the upcoming season, released at midnight on New Year’s Eve, begins with a faux broadcast of “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve” with the late TV host helping count down to 1985. Fireworks then go off, and the screen reads, “One summer can change everything …” before the new premiere date is revealed.

A new poster for the upcoming stretch of shows has the same tagline and pictures young teen lovebirds Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) holding hands. They’re surrounded by their pals Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) as fireworks explode in the sky.

In both the first and second seasons, the kids are threatened by creature from the Upside Down, an alternate dimension accidentally created by Hawkins National Laboratory after it secretly conducted paranormal and supernatural experiments.

NETFLIX The cast of “Stranger Things,” shown in Season 2, will return for a third season with a wrinkle — it’s summer, not fall and winter, in the town of Hawkins, Ind.