'Stranger Things' Season 3 Preview, Trailer Breakdown & Episode Title Discussion

It has been a long 2 plus years while we waited for the Duffer brothers to take us back to Hawkins, Indiana but on July 4th weekend, season 3 finally arrives. As per usual, Netflix will be dropping the whole season in one day with a confirmed 8 episodes.

Netflix's own press release for the show states:

"It's 1985 in Hawkins, Indiana, and summer's heating up. School's out, there's a brand new mall in town, and the Hawkins crew are on the cusp of adulthood. Romance blossoms and complicates the group's dynamic, and they'll have to figure out how to grow up without growing apart. Meanwhile, danger looms. When the town's threatened by enemies old and new, Eleven and her friends are reminded that evil never ends; it evolves. Now they'll have to band together to survive, and remember that friendship is always stronger than fear."

Trailer Breakdown

We finally received a new trailer at the end of March opening with Dustin returning from summer camp set to Motley Crue's "Home Sweet Home." Unbeknownst to him all the gang are waiting to through him a surprise party while he complains that only his turtle is happy to see him.

Then just for shits and giggles Eleven decides to start making his toys move by themselves! This of course would freak anyone out (and is the nose bleed and headache from using your powers for this really worth it?) and when they creep up on him and shout poor Lucas gets a spray can in the face.

From there we start the trailer 'proper' with The Who's "Baba O Riley," and great editing immediately syncing up the songs lyrics with the opening shots of the kids putting some kind of antenna up in the field.

We cut to Nancy & Jonathan at the Hawkins Post where I assume they are now working, it wouldn't be a season of 'Stranger Things' without Nancy & Jonathan investigating something.

Next we see Billy in his new job as a life guard at the town pool, before seeing Sheriff Hopper waiting for someone in a restaurant, while Joyce sits eating alone. Billy was a massive idiot throughout season 2 and we only got a small bit of character development with him towards the end, hopefully in season 3 he will get the Steve Harrington treatment and his character will be fleshed out in more detail.

We get the classic 'we're not kids anymore' line while Will mopes around looking at pictures of the original gang, with four of the group being couples now, how will that change the dynamic of the team going forward? We see that Dustin & Steve's flourishing friendship is still going strong as they goof around playing lightsaber's in the town's new cinema.

As this is 1985 and America, the biggest event in Hawkins is the grand opening of the Starcourt Mall, with Stranger Things penchant for 80's horror I'm fully expecting a Day/Dawn of the Dead sequence!

The tempo of the trailer then picks up slamming us with a ton of quick cuts the highlights being,

• Some dude in a gas mark gets vapourised
• Lucas crawling through a tunnel
• All the kids in the mall where Eleven has clearly just used her powers
• The new mayor Larry Kline is introduced & played by 80s icon Cary Elwes
• Rats scurrying away from something—we know if the rats are running, what's behind them can't be good!
• A blood covered demented looking Jake Busey is shown
• Eleven looks to go full Rambo by blindfolding herself with a bandana to use her powers
• A massive monster faces down Jonathan
• Lucas using a slingshot! Really Lucas what the hell will a slingshot do against a Demogorgon?
• Two female characters I don't recognise looking possessed while fireworks go off behind them
• Someone is clearly jabbing Steve with a needle in the neck

Then we have the reveal of the massive Demogorgon facing down the kids in a corridor, before a nice comic beat with Steve's co-worker mocking him for being friends with younger kids.

Here be monster

Rampant Speculation Section

One great things about the 80s themed ideals behind the show is that each season the Duffer brothers release the episode titles of all the whole season before the show airs. This obviously generates a tremendous amount of fan speculation and debate about the content of the upcoming season.

Chapter One: "Suzie, Do You Copy?"

From the trailer we gleam that the gang are putting some kind of antenna up on a hill and if we know anything about 80s kids films, some Aliens are sure to turn up. Will they be good or evil? I'm guessing evil and it is a trope of classic 80's films about science experiments going wrong. Predicting right now the final scene will be a message being to sent via the antenna.

Chapter 2: "The Mall Rats"

I don't care that Kevin Smith wasn't a filmmaker in the 1980's. I still want a Mallrats reference in this episode! However the episode is probably more concerned with the opening of the Starcourt Mall which from the trailer and stills looks to be on of this seasons key locations. We already know that Steve Harrington gets a job working at the malls cinema and that some of the climactic scenes from the season look to take place here.

Chapter 3: The Case of the Missing Life Guard"

It looks like the character of Billy will be getting some much needed development this season from the useless angry douchebag he was in season 2. We know he is a life guard this season and Francesca Reale (pictured above) will play a new character and lifeguard Heather, and obviously a lifeguard goes missing.

Chapter 4: "The Sauna Test"

I'm grasping at straws for this one but here's a theory. What if this season Stranger Things is doing some kind of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-plot line? I base this on the last season where a warm bath helped get the shadow monster out of Will, so maybe in this season they think someone or multiple people have been taken over my shadow monsters and the sauna is a place where they can meet due to the monster's affinity for cold?

Chapter 5: "The Source"

Not a clue here, it could either be a flashback episode that explains the lore of the upside down, the 'source' if you will, or it could be the gang discovering the source of whatever this season's big bad is going to be?

Chapter 6: "The Birthday"

Obviously one of the character's birthdays, and perhaps the calm before the storm of the last two episodes, as in previous seasons there has been a lull before the end of season showdowns. Within the confines of the genre I'm fairly certain this birthday will not be a happy one and a small prediction that a key character will get attacked at the very end of the episode leading onto...

Chapter 7: "The Bite"

Well clearly someone gets bitten as we see a brief flash of infection spreading on someone in the shower during the trailer, at a guess I would say Steve or Billy? Perhaps this 'bodysnatcher' idea I have is in full force by now and we slowly lose one of our key characters to it over the course of the episode?

Chapter 8: "The Battle of Starcourt"

And with the final episode we are back to the Starcourt Mall! We can expect Eleven blowing things up with her mind, monsters attacking, one or two smaller characters getting eaten and maybe a main character this season? With many season finales these days a decent portion of the episode has to be given over to setting up plot threads for next season and closing those from this one, although there's no official word on how many seasons of Stranger Things there are to come realistically the budget of the show is going to go up each season the kids get more and more famous. Also how many times can they be attacked by the same monsters? I think before people turn on the show (like all shows these days! Thanks toxic fan culture!) I'd suggest a brief time jump and finish things off with a fourth season as the kids are about to graduate high school.

Whatever the future holds for the show I'm clearing a solid 10 hours on July 4th this year!