STRANGER THINGS Now even Stranger. Strangest Things?
IT’S ALL CHANGE FOR THE NEW, THIRD SEASON OF NETFLIX PHENOMENON STRANGER THINGS, AS THE YOUNG CAST EXPLAINS TO BOYD HILTON
SUCH IS THE ALMOST unlimited power of Netflix, they’ve transported Pilot TV back to July, 1985. We’re strolling round the Starcourt, a newly built mall in middle America. Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’ is pumping out of the speakers, Back To The Future, Cocoon and Fletch are playing at the multiplex cinema, pastel-coloured boomboxes line the shelves of the Radio Shack store, there’s a Jazzercise outlet above the food court, and a bunch of little kids are exploiting the free sample offer at the Scoops Ahoy ice-cream parlour, much to the annoyance of the older teens who work there. School’s most definitely out for summer. In the middle of this retina-scorching whirl of neon and strip-lighting is a teenage girl with a drop of blood at her nostril.
This is, of course, the fictional world of Hawkins, Indiana, the small town at the centre of Stranger Things, Netflix’s biggest popculture phenomenon so far, created by the Duffer brothers, Matt and Ross. And that world is about to change radically. After two series mostly set in grey school classrooms and corridors, the basements of suburban homes, and a shady research facility deep in the woods, Season 3 broadens its canvas, with much of the early action taking place in this vast retail palace, which is actually a real, disused mall on the outskirts of Atlanta, transformed by genius production designers into a meticulously accurate recreation of gaudy ’80s retail iconography. The place is entirely emblematic of the show’s bright new glow.
“Season 3 is the most different season for sure because it’s set in the summer, which we’ve never done before,” explains Finn Wolfhard, who plays Mike Wheeler, one of the gaggle of teen nerd heroes around whom the show revolves. “It’s always [been] set at school or with school involved, but now it kind of starts off with a bang. We’re all just enjoying ourselves at the height of our teenage lives and then something just happens…” darken the atmosphere, we won’t spoil. Let’s just say that despite many upbeat sequences in the first few episodes cutting between throngs of teens scurrying around the mall and Hawkins locals frolicking in the community swimming pool, there are still horrors lurking. The breezy summer vibe won’t last too long.
Indeed ill portents are everywhere as the early episodes progress. There’s a mysterious Russian man wandering round town, throwing back to a scene in Season 1 when Eleven remembered an encounter with a Russian agent. Gaten Matarazzo’s adorable science nerd Dustin is hearing weird voices on his walkie talkie. And there are rats. Lots of rats. Exploding rats.
As Wolfhard puts it, “The more fun we’re having at the start of this season, the bigger the drop…” It’s no accident that George A. Romero’s classic Day Of The Dead is also showing at the movie theatre, as Season 3’s steady march towards July 4, 1985 kicks in, and that zombie movie’s bleakly apocalyptic mood is perhaps a harbinger of what’s to come. Speaking to the young cast members on set, they’re keen to point out how the famous influences on the tone of the show have shifted from the family-friendly ET, The Goonies and Stand By Me, to the far creepier Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and The Shining. “It’s definitely darker,” says Charlie Heaton, who plays cool-but-he-doesn’t-know-it teen Jonathan Byers. When asked if this season will be scarier, Wolfhard, who’s 16 years old, says it’s more a case of creators and showrunners “becoming better at doing horror”. It’s clear that Wolfhard, along with his fellow young cast-mates Noah Schnapp (Will), Caleb Mclaughlin (Lucas) and Gaten Matarazzo (Dustin), feel they know what makes the show work as well as anyone, having been at the centre of it for over three years. So while the Duffers did originally give all the actors a primer on the movies that influenced the show (mostly ones directed by Steven Spielberg or adapted from Stephen King stories), there’s no need for that now. “They make references but they don’t give us any homework,” says Schnapp. “Because we’ve been doing this for three years. They gave us those references at the beginning because everyone was coming into the show and they wanted us to know what their baby was, their story. But now we all know each other and know what the show is.” Jonathan’s younger brother whose disappearance in the alternative dimension of the Upside Down sparked off this whole saga, he’s still disturbed by visions of the gigantic tentacled shadow monster hovering over the town, as seen in the last shot of Season 2, and he’s got a worrying new itch on the back of his neck. When asked what kind of distressing new trauma his character faces this year, Schnapp shoots back, “A bad haircut”. It’s true, he does endure a particularly unfortunate twist on the pudding-bowl look. But there’s more.
“Collectively, bad things happen,” he adds. “Will still has the presence of the monster left, and you kind of see what happens there. People have asked, ‘Does Will get a break this season?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, for the first two episodes. And then no one really gets a break.’”
Caleb Mclaughlin , who plays Will’s other close confidante, Lucas, agrees. “It’s an over-arching threat that covers everyone,” he says. “I mean, obviously there are little storylines that break up, and different characters have storylines together, but everyone kind of has the same understanding of the threat.”
Billy Hargrove, played by Australian actor Dacre Montgomery, certainly does. He might even be the threat. Introduced in Season 2, along with his younger step-sister Max (Sadie
Sink), he spent most of his time being deeply unpleasant to everyone he encountered. Now he’s working as a lifeguard at the municipal pool, strutting around in his swim shorts, enjoying the experience of being ogled by the locals, until, as Montgomery puts it, “Something far more sinister starts to unfold”.
While his fellow cast-mates weren’t given homework, the Duffer brothers did encourage Dacre to watch The Shining, and Jack Nicholson’s performance in particular, to indicate the way Billy is heading. “He’s pure evil this season,” says Montgomery, bluntly. Billy’s turn to the really dark side is front and centre this season, while the show begins to spend more time with the wider ensemble.
If Season 1 centred on Will’s buddies searching for him after he disappeared into the nightmare of the Upside Down and meeting the mysterious Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), and Season 2 foregrounded Will’s troubled return in what some critics felt was a remix of the first series, the third chapter gives all the main characters, young and old, way more to do, with genuine jeopardy for everyone.
According to Wolfhard, “The first season was more about the adventure aspect and kind of fun, the second season was more about the horror aspect, season three is everything, like the fun of season one and the horror of season two and the Duffers have got better at it, at writing it. And we’ve become better actors”. that the Duffers know their cast so well now, they’re building the character arcs round the actors’ real-life personalities and interrelationships. The friendship groups have shifted this season, for example. Matarazzo’s science nerd Dustin spends more time away from Will and his gang, to hang out with older character Steve, played by Joe Keery, he of the extraordinarily lavish hair, who’s now working in the mall’s ice-cream parlour. “Dustin and Steve are pretty much best friends now. You’d be surprised,” explains Gaten, proudly. Keery adds, “It’s pretty cool that they can have such a close relationship. I think it’s down to the fact that Steve in a lot of ways is immature and Dustin is so mature that they meet in the middle. The relationship is sometimes like a little married couple.” The Duffers have so successfully transformed Steve, one of season 1’s more irritating and antagonistic characters, a jock figure who stood in the way of Nancy and Jonathan’s relationship, he’s become one of the most likeable elements of the whole show.
Then there’s last season’s other newbie, Max, Dacre’s cool, tomboyish outsider of a step-sister who bonded with Will and the boys, drawing feelings of resentment from Eleven. This time round, Max and Eleven are a formidable duo. “I think most of the show in the first two seasons revolves around the boys and their friendships,” observes Sink, who plays Max, “So it’s interesting to see two girls have a friendship, especially as we’re friends in real life. Millie Bobby Brown nods, “We’re two powerful girls in real life and we’re also two powerful girls in the show. So putting two powerful female forces together, the Duffer brothers couldn’t have been more smart.” One of the most delightful elements of the early part of Season 3 is watching Max take Eleven under her wing, introducing her to the delights of shopping – and Madonna, with major echoes of another 1985 movie classic, Desperately Seeking Susan.
With Max showing Eleven how to interact “in the real world”, as Sink puts it, away from the safe bubble of her existence with adoptive father Jim, there’s a sense in which the young characters of Stranger Things are helping each other grow up. “We’re not kids any more,” says Mike, at one point, spurning Will’s invitation to play Dungeons And Dragons, in favour of canoodling with Eleven. Yes, as the season kicks off, 12 months after we last saw them, Eleven is engaging in a series of heavy petting situations with Mike, to a soundtrack of ’80s soft rock, while Lucas is dating Max, leaving Will feeling even more isolated than when he was trapped in an alternate dimension and being brainwashed by a monster.
It doesn’t help Will that his brother Jonathan is maturing as well, and is even more preoccupied than ever by his girlfriend Nancy (Natalia Dyer). They’re also now both interns at the local paper, the Hawkins Post, another key new location in the show. “Jonathan’s doing photography and Nancy’s the journalist,” explains Heaton. “Definitely they’ve matured, in the sense that their relationship has become stable. They know where they are with each other and how they navigate that”.
“This year we see how the dynamic of their relationship works,’ adds Dyer. to describe Season 3 as “the biggest jump into something new” he’s not only referring to the locations and visuals, he’s also touching upon the show’s emotional landscape. It’s no surprise that after three years of working on the show, everyone involved has a clearer sense of who the characters are. Some of them may have started out as teen archetypes – jocks, nerds, outsiders, tomboys and trophy girlfriends – but they’re not any more. Perhaps the most refreshing development of this new season is the arrival of Robin, played by Maya Hawke (daughter of Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman). She’s not in the same social scene at high school, but forges a friendship with Steve now they’re working together at the Mall’s ice-cream parlour.
Robin is such a smart, instantly soulful figure, actress Hawke is loathe to pin her down. “It’s really painful to take a person and assign them adjectives,” says Hawke. “But she’s funny and sarcastic and brave and really, really smart. As the season progresses she figures things out and does things that are almost unimaginably intelligent. She’s really clever and creative and funny, but she’s always been excluded at school. She isn’t one of the cool kids.”
How Robin relates to Steve and how they both relate to young Dustin is indicative of the way the Duffer brothers have changed it all up this series. In many ways it’s now all about the dynamics of growing up, forging relationships, dealing with rejection, and falling in love.
That’s the essence of the new, even more ambitious season of Stranger Things: come for the ’80s nostalgia, Spielberg references and giant tentacled monsters; stay for the beautiful consideration of human friendship. All that, plus exploding rats. STRANGER THINGS AIRS ON NETFLIX ON JULY 4