Beat your mind: Stranger Things S3 may be the best show season to date

The favorite teenage squad of everyone is back, facing Russian agents, local corruption and the last supernatural evil that emerged from Upside Down during the third season of Netflix Strange things. Anyone who is worried that the show will lose its brilliance three years later should be quiet: season three is as successful as the first – in some respects even better.

The first season was set in November 1983, when an accident in a secret government lab opened an interdimensional portal and triggered a supernatural threat from another dimension on Hawkins' unsuspecting city, in the Indiana, in the form of a creature nicknamed the Demogorgon. . The source of this accident? A young girl with psychokinetic powers, known only as Eleven (Milly Bobby Brown). She escaped from the lab and was friends with a group of pre-teens whose friend, Will (Noah Schnapp) mysteriously disappeared into another dimension dubbed the 'l'. Upside Down. They teamed up to find Will and defeat the monster who took it.

In season 2, we learned that this monster was only the tip of the iceberg. An even more powerful entity, called The Mind Flayer, threatened the city and possessed a poor Will, still traumatized by his stay in Upside Down. Eleven managed to close the gate, but the final scene showed that the felt-tip was still hiding in a threatening way in this dark mirror image of Hawkins.

In the third season, Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will, Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sadie Sink) and Eleven grow up and badociate, with all the usual melodrama badociated with such scenarios . . Mike's sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), still attends Will's older brother, Jonathon (Charlie Heaton). Chef Jim Hopper (David Harbor) does not take care of Mike's and Eleven's teenage romance, while Will's mother, Joyce (Wynona Ryder), struggles to cope with the terrible personal loss she has suffered last season.

Our brave teenage heroes learned a lot about the Mind Flayer over two seasons. But the monster has also learned about them, and it's time to take revenge – and he knows that Eleven is the only real threat that hinders him. In the trailer, we learned that Mind Flayer was never trapped when 11 people closed the portal at the end of the second season. He has been hiding in Hawkins all this time, which means he has found a new host: his half-brother Max, Billy (Dacre Montgomery). And Billy recruits more and more city-dwellers in order to create a creature capable of eliminating Eleven once and for all, giving free rein to the spirit of all living beings.

Summer in crazy

The best part of this new season is how complicated it is; the pace is almost perfect, even if it takes several episodes before the goal of various developments becomes clear. Given the complexity of the story and the size of the cast – not to mention the need to give all major roles the lead role in impending slaughter – this is no small feat. There are many moving parts.

If Eleven, Mike and the rest of the band are still so pretty, the colorful background troop frequently threatens to steal the show, including the "Scoop Troop". Dustin badociates with reformed high school student Steve Harrington (Joe Keery), Steve's colleague at Glacier Scoops Ahoy, Robin (Maya Hawke, daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke) and Lucas's younger sister, Erica (Priah Ferguson). . They discover that the Russians are building a secret lab under the new Starcourt Mall, with the help of the corrupt Hawkins mayor, Larry Kline (Cary Elwes).

The investigative journalist and conspiracy theorist Murray Bauman (Brett Gelman), who has always had this insight into his relationships, which he showed during the second season, this time aimed at the unexpressed tension between Joyce and Hopper. They need him to translate Alexei (Alec Utgoff), a Russian engineer who intends to launch the machine they built under the mall to reopen the gateway to Upside Down – as long as He can watch Looney Toons and get a steady supply of Cherry Slurpees.

As my colleague, Nathan Matisse, has pointed out in his account of the first half of the season, Nancy and Jonathan are stuck in the weakest scenario, interning at the local newspaper. But even that leads somewhere to the end, as both discover (eventually) that people are possessed by the mental flier. As in previous seasons, all these threads eventually converge and lead to a confrontation with Mind Flayer, this time at Starcourt Mall.

(MAIN spoilers below.) Stop now if you have not finished watching the season.)

Eleven has always been the Hawkins' secret weapon to repel Mind Flayer, although the rest of the cast certainly contributed to it. In the third season, the Duffer brothers raise the bar by eliminating eleven from the equation. She is bitten by the Flay-Monster (a huge thing that changes shape with Graboid-like tentacles), and despite the removal of the parasite planted in her leg, this short-lived infection neutralizes her powers of telekinesis.

It is a wise decision, because otherwise the final would have looked too much like a retreading of past seasons. In the end, it takes a village to defeat the Flayer spirit and save the world. Each main actor brings a unique attribute to the table: Nancy's marksmanship, for example; Jonathan's mechanical know-how; Dustin's oversized ham radio (nicknamed "Cerebro"); and Lucas' love for powerful fireworks. Unable to rely on his powers, Eleven can still use his prior access to his memories and natural empathy to reach all that remains of Billy's spirit, pushing him to redeem himself by taking one last courageous stand against the beast. who hijacked it. brain. The bully gets the death of a hero.

Hopper sacrifices himself so that Joyce can blow up the Russian machine, close the gate and cut the Flay-Monster from its source of energy, the Upside Down. It may break fans' hearts more than the heroic death of lovable DWB Bob Newby (Sean Astin) in the second season. Like Billy, Hopper has his problems, related to the loss of his daughter and the subsequent breakup of her marriage. He slowly crawled out of a dark emotional hole, thanks to Eleven and some incipient sparks with Joyce. The gaze of wordless anguish that pbades between Joyce and Eleven when she realizes that she has lost her father is far more devastating than any dialogue could have said.

This is not over yet

Netflix has not officially renewed the series for a fourth season, but given the record number of viewers, it's only a matter of time. A mid-credits scene suggests that season 4 will probably go further in the unanswered Russian question – namely, why did the Russians try to open the door to Upside Down, after Eleven and the gang have given so much trouble to close it in season two? The scene takes us to a secret base in Russia, where two guards approach a prison door. "Not the American," says a guard. Instead, they kidnap a Russian prisoner and lock him in a room with a captive Demogorgon, who then devours the screaming prisoner.

There has been a lot of speculation online that "the American" refers to Hopper, since we have never seen him die, and loyal fans are not quite ready to give up the # 39 hope David Harbor and his "papa bod" will come back at some point. Or maybe it refers to Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine), the scientist who discovered and exploited Eleven at the base. He is supposed to be dead at the hands of the first Demogorgon of Season 1, but there is a brief mention in Season 2 that Brenner is still alive.

The Duffer brothers have recently alluded to Weekly entertainment this season four will pave the way for the plot outside Hawkins – and that yes, the Russians and their captive Demogorgon will play a major role. We have already seen part of this episode of season 2 "The Lost Sister", where Eleven went to Chicago to find Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), another young woman with special powers, also a victim of Brenner's secret lab. It's no coincidence that the Byers family left Hawkins to take Eleven with her. Eleven will probably see Eleven struggling with the loss of his powers (hopefully just temporary) in the fourth season, and maybe Kali will come back in the chart, given his influence in helping him achieve the full potential of his telekinesis abilities.

The Duffer brothers also said that they risk ending Strange things after a fourth (or possibly a fifth) season. Frankly, I do not know how much they can increase the dramatic issues before it all becomes a little too familiar and repetitive. But given the quality of their development for this fantastic third season, I'm ready to start season 4 with faith – for now.