I'm Sadie Gennis and I'm gonna tell you What The F-ck Just Happened in Stranger Things season 3
and after you watch this please check out more of our What The F-ck videos.
Throughout the entire season everyone was pretty much split up into four different groups, each dealing with their own set of problems.
Okay, makes sense.
Of course, all of this winds up being connected in the end so let's break it down.
As it turns out, when Eleven closed the gate to the upside down in the Season Two finale,
it didn't kill the Mind Flayer like they had assumed.
Instead, the part of the Mind Flayer that had been possessing Will was actually trapped in our world
but laying dormant until a machine that the Russians built reactivated it.
The Mind Flayer made an abandoned steel warehouse its new home base
and it's there that it started testing out its new possession techniques on their rats,
taking over not only their minds and bodies but forcing them to consume a lot of
chemicals so that it would literally alter their DNA and they could become the first building blocks in building this flesh
monster host for the Mind Flayer.
I love body horror.
Unfortunately for Billy, God rest his soul,
He winds up driving past the steel warehouse, by pure chance, on his way to meet Mrs. Wheeler
and the little flesh monster attacks him and makes Billy the first human host for the Mind Flayer this season.
Billy does do his best to resist at first
Stay away from me.
But the Mind Flayer is crazy powerful, and he eventually gives in and just starts, you know, kidnapping co-workers and parents.
Pretty much everyone he can get his hands on, turning a lot of the population of Hawkins into, like, Upside Down zombies.
By pure chance Eleven actually winds up seeing Billy's first victim, Heather, when she and Max are spying on people during a sleepover,
which is like an insane sleepover game.
This disturbing vision prompted Max an Eleven to start investigating Billy,
but it was only once they start talking to the boys again and Will said that he could sense that the Mind Flayer was back
that they started to suspect what was really going on with Billy.
Nancy and Jonathan meet up with the kids and they all start sharing information and
realizing that this Mind Flayer situation is a lot more complicated than they thought it was.
They decide to go find Mrs. Driscoll at the hospital hoping that she could lead them to the Mind Flayers secret lair.
At this point, they still thought it was just a regular old Mind Flayer possession situation.
At the hospital Nancy and Jonathan's co-workers at the Hawkins post, Tom and Bruce,
attack them and even when they think they've killed them, they like turn into goop and then form a flesh monster, Megazord.
You're a loser.
I'm cool.
That's when they realized that this new creature is way more terrifying and way more disgusting than anything they faced in the past.
Still determined to figure out where the Mind Flayer is camping out, Eleven uses her powers to go inside Billy's memories
which we've only seen her do before with her mom.
Once El in in Billy's memories, we see his entire origin story play out.
We see him as a child happy with his mom at the beach.
We see all about the abusive relationship his mother and father had.
And then we see his mom abandoning him Billy to get out of her marriage
but not taking him with her.
It's absolutely heartbreaking and it gives some insight into why Billy became this bully that we see today
Also Billy's dad does suck and like Max's mom needs to get the f-ck out.
After all these heartbreaking scenes Eleven finally figures out where the Mind Flayer is at the steel warehouse.
But because Eleven went into Billy's mind to see all this it also enabled the mindflayer to see her back.
Eleven tries to get back to the real world,
but the Mind Flayer is able to trap her in a vision in
Hoppers cabin where it tells her that the flesh monster was built just for Eleven and that once it's done killing her it's gonna kill
all of her friends and then basically kill all of humanity.
When Eleven does get back to her friends,
she shares all of this information with them. But before anyone has a chance to ruminate on their mortality the flesh monster shows up
Eleven is able to fend off the Mind Flayer
But what she doesn't realize for a while is that there's actually part of the flesh monster
embedded inside of her.
It can track them. It can do all sorts of stuff.
But all that's only half the story
The other half of season three of Stranger Things was all about the Soviet
conspiracy, which is what brought the Mind Flayer back to begin with.
After Dustin returns home from summer camp,
he sets up this massive homemade a radio tower so that he can communicate with his, very real, camp girlfriend, Susie.
But he accidentally winds up intercepting a secret Russian transmission.
So he goes to his best friend Steve and they decide to crack the code and become, like, American heroes.
But, they're kind of bumbling idiots
so they rope in Steve Scoops co-worker Robin, who, absolutely f-cking rules and she's able to
translate this code,
which leads them to discover the secret loading bay in Starcourt Mall, where Steve and Robin work.
They come up with a plan to break into the loading bay going through the air vents.
But Dustin is too big, and so they wind up getting Lucas's younger sister Erica to do it for them.
This plan actually goes surprisingly well at first and they're able to get into the loading bay and open up the boxes and they find these like
scientific looking tubes of green corrosive goop.
Their plan is to take one of these tubes and get out,
but then the room turns into an elevator and they wind up trapped far underground in a secret Russian
underground lair.
The kids try and sneak out and get back to the mall, but they are obviously spotted by the Russian soldiers.
But Robin and Steve managed to hold off the soldiers long enough for Dustin and Erica to escape
Robin and Steve are then just subjected to a lot of torture
because the Russians cannot believe that just two random ice cream scoopers
managed to find their underground lair and it's not pretty but
fortunately before anyone loses an appendage, Dustin and Erica bus back in
Everyone's great except Steve and Robin are now really, really high
Meanwhile, Joyce and Hopper are also investigating the Soviets, but they have absolutely no idea.
They think they're actually investigating the US government.
Magnets!
After Joyce notices that her magnets at home and at her store have lost their magnetism,
she goes and she talks to the middle school science teacher and realizes that the only thing that could hypothetically
cause this would be some, like, giant expensive massive machine that requires a lot of power.
She is convinced that this means Hawkins lab is up and running again. So she makes Hopper take her there
They see that the upside down is still sealed with cement. But before they can leave the lab,
they are attacked by this Russian assassin, Grigory, until they realize they're definitely on to something.
Hopper recognizes Grigory from Mayor Kline's office,
so he goes and basically torches this information out of him and finds out that
Grigory works for the people who own Starcourt Mall, and that they have been buying up all of this land in East Hawkins.
They need a proper piece of land.
Joyce and Hopper start investigating all the land that Starcourt has bought and that's when they find this Russian underground
bunker where there are two men working.
One of them is Alexei, who is running the lab now
Before they can get any information out of these guys, Grigory shows up again
There's a huge fight, and so hopper f*cking kidnaps Alexei, and him Joyce and Alexei get out alive.
But barely.
They decide to take Alexei to Illinois to find Murray who can translate for them and is like super into this whole
Russian conspiracy sh*t already, so match made in heaven right there.
Thanks to Murray's translation, they soon figure out that Russia has been trying to open a gate to the upside down for a while,
but that this is the first time they've had success because it needed to be in Hawkins.
Alexei also reveals that the only way to destroy the machine is by stealing, like, these two keys out of a vault and turning them simultaneously.
They hop in this stolen car to head back to Hawkins.
But first they have to stop off at the Fun Fair.
While Joyce and Hopper are looking for their kids at the 4th of July
carnival, Kline sees them and totally snitches and calls Grigory who heads right on over there to try and, like,
You know, kill everyone basically.
And unfortunately, he does succeed and shoots Alexei,
Him and Hopper have another face-off.
They both managed to survive once again, but Hopper does make it out with one of the Russian walkie-talkies.
Which is how him and Joyce figure out that all of their kids are actually at the mall and the Russians are after them too.
Everyone meets up at the mall and finally everyone shares information with each other,
and then they're able to work together to come up with the best plan possible
so that Hopper, Joyce, and Murray can go into the underground lab and destroy the machine.
While the adults are off doing that, the Mind Flayer manages to find the kids.
And Eleven, having used her powers again, and again, and again all season,
is completely tapped out and isn't able to use any of her abilities.
Because of that, Billy steam rolls over everyone and knocks out
Mike, knocks out Max, throws Eleven over his shoulder like a potato sack, and brings her right to the flesh monster.
But right before the flesh monster is kinda just totally, you know,
destroy Eleven,
she's able to connect with the real Billy by reminding him of what he was like as a child and playing off those memories
she had seen earlier.
Billy has the strength to take his body back and he uses that ability to sacrifice himself to the flesh monster and buys
Eleven some much-needed time.
Just it's such an emotional scene. It's so powerful.
It was with Millie, and I just felt like she reciprocated that
emotional investment, I think that I was trying to give her, back to me.
And it's such a rewarding ending for my character
Of course Billy would not have needed to sacrifice himself if Joyce and Hopper had been able to blow up the machine as planned
without having to first deal with Grigory, who finds them and fights with Hopper for the millionth time this season.
But in this time Hopper gets the upper hand and just throws that Russian assassin right into the machine
It was way more graphic and I thought it would be.
But unfortunately, because, you know, I guess a human body being thrown into the cogs of this machine caused it to malfunction,
Hopper winds up getting trapped behind this, like, wall of electricity
so that he's on the side next to the upside-down gate and Joyce is in the lab with the keys.
But hopper gives her the go-ahead to just turn both keys and destroy this machine.
Hopefully killing the Mind Flayer for good.
But is Hopper really dead?
We see other people on that lab floor like get completely obliterated,
but we never see Hopper.
And when Joyce goes on the floor after things calmed down she isn't able to find any trace of him
Until I see a body no one's f*cking dead.
The show then jumps forward three months in time and it definitely does seem like Hopper is dead.
Joyce has adopted Eleven and she's moving her family far away from Hawkins.
Watching everyone say their goodbyes and pack up the stuff was extremely emotional,
but the real gut punch was when Joyce showed Eleven the letter that Hopper had written
to help him prepare for the heart-to-heart he had planned to have with Eleven and Mike.
But, while all the characters seem to think that Hopper is dead,
a mid credit sequence definitely implies that he might still be alive.
The scene takes place in a Russian prison and we see some soldiers walking down a hallway to take a prisoner, and one of them
Is like no, no, not the American.
So is that unseen prisoner Hopper? And if so, like, how the hell did he get there?
I have one theory and it's a little crazy, but just hear me out.
In Back to the Future, they put plutonium into a machine and then it enables it to travel through time.
And in The Fly, Jeff Goldblum's character creates a teleportation device.
So maybe when that machine went haywire with that unknown chemical substance in it,
[Hopper] was transported through space and/or time.
People have speculated online that it may be the future, or maybe in the past, or maybe
like, it may have some time component.
I love time travel movies. I would love to see time travel in it.
Teleportation, like whatever.
They didn't put a year on that credit sequence. Who knows what year it is?
We definitely saw everyone else on the lab floor be incinerated by the machine,
but maybe because Hopper was on the other side of that, like, electricity wave,
he was affected differently.
But even if that is Hopper in that cell and he is alive,
he's still in major trouble, because the Russians are feeding their prisoners to a baby Demagorgen.
Maybe trying to grow it and tame it the way Dustin had done with Dart in season two.
The most obvious answer is that they just want to weaponize parts of the upside down.
But there's also the added wrinkle that it's perhaps. Dr. Brenner who's running all of these experiments.
It's possible that after Dr.
Brenner left Hawkins in season one, he wound up deflecting to the Soviets so that he could continue all of his
experiments with the upside down.
As always the season of Stranger Things was jam-packed with super nostalgic awesome 80s references,
so let's break down a few of the best.
John Carpenter's
1982 movie, The Thing, is actually such an important influence on this season that they actually had the characters discuss it in a scene.
The movie follows a group of researchers in Antarctica who realize that they have to fight this
shape-shifting alien creature who's able to infect and mimic everything they come into contact with.
And like the Mind Flayer, it has hive intelligence and like every little piece of it is autonomous.
The first movie we see the kids sneak into the Starcourt theatre to see is George Romero's, Day of the Dead.
The third movie in his Night of the Living Dead franchise.
In the film, zombies completely outnumber humans, but there is still some
egotistical scientists who insist on trying to experiment on them and control them.
As a result these disagreeing factions of humans find up fighting each other rather than working together to solve this crisis.
The parallels to Stranger Things are pretty clear with the Russians continuing to
experiment on the upside down and trying to control it, rather than work together with other Countries to make sure that the Mind Flayer doesn't wipe us all out.
Also the fact that this season took place so much in a mall is definitely reminiscent of Dawn of the Dead,
the sequel in the Night of the Living Dead franchise which takes place almost entirely in a mall.
The great pool scene with Billy in the season premiere also brings to mind both Caddyshack and Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
In Stranger Things when all eyes were on Billy as he strolled out to his lifeguard chair,
it really felt like the moment in Caddyshack when all eyes were on Lacey going up to the diving board.
The song playing under the scene is also The Cars Moving in Stereo, the exact same song that played during Fast Times infamous Phoebe Cates pool scene.
Fast Times is actually referenced multiple times throughout the season
Most notably every time Dustin insists his girlfriend, Susie, is hotter than Phoebe Cates.
No way, hotter than Phoebe Cates?
And when Steve adorably bumped into a Fast Times cutout at Family Video.
This season left so many questions still unanswered. So let's talk through the biggest ones now.
What happens now that the Byers have moved away.
I don't even have an answer!
With the characters spread out between Hawkins, wherever the Byers moved, and possibly even Russia what is gonna happen in season four?
that will bring everyone together again?
Is everyone gonna team back up to rescue Hopper in an international adventure?
Is Kali gonna track down Eleven and say she needs to get the group back together because they need to go fight some monsters or whatever?
Or are another group of idiot humans gonna reopen the upside-down gate and Eleven's gonna have to go back to Hawkins and close it?
But again, who knows? I don't know.
Great.
No matter what brings the kids back together again a big question is what's gonna happen now that Eleven lost her powers and is
she gonna get them back?
They'll come back, I know they will.
As the time jump revealed, even three months after the Battle of Starcourt, Eleven still hadn't regained her abilities.
So maybe next season we'll find her searching for a way to get them back which could mean reaching out to Kali or some of
the other numbered children.
Or even tracking them people like Brenner or others from Hawkins lab in order to get answers.
Also is the Mindflayer slain for good?
They just did the exact same thing this season and closed the gate to kill him which they knew
didn't work in season 2.
Why would they assume that this would be permanent?
Are they just hoping that someone doesn't open the gate and it just comes right back alive again?
I'm ready for a different villain.
Maybe the fact that the Russians are, like, breeding Demagorgens means
we're gonna get some vintage season 1 monsters
I don't want 3 seasons of the Mind Flayer in a row.
Monsters aside, we also have to wonder which of the couples are gonna stay together through all of this.
For all you saps out there!
Max and Lucas, they're both still in Hawkins.
I see them going off and on for years to come before eventually, you know settling down and then just bickering
constantly until they are old and in their graves.
But Nancy and Jonathan, they went through it a bit this season and now they have to do long-distance?
And they're starting in college?
I think they're probably gonna break up and I think they should break up because they are young and they should explore themselves
independently as people.
Now I'm just giving dating advice to fictional characters.
And then there's everyone's favorite couple, Mike and Eleven.
They are determined to make this long-distance
relationship work and even said 'I love you' in the finale in just like such a sweet scene, but they're so young.
Can you imagine doing long-distance when you're a freshman in high school? Like god no?
But Mike and Eleven are not normal kids.
They already got through Eleven being on the run for like an entire year and not being able to like see each other.
So if they can make it through everything they've already been through I'm pretty sure they can make this long-distance
situation work.
And also, let me put this request into the world.
No new love interest for Steve in season 4.
I just want more of his friendship with Robin.
That relationship was such a bright spot this season. They were so much fun together!
And when Robin came out as gay and the way that Steve and the show handled it,
it was such a beautiful moment, and really funny, those Muppet voices were fantastic.
I want to see that relationship develop and deepen and get more complex.
And if Hopper's alive, should him and Joyce actually get together?
I'm like muttering, just f*ck already.
This is not a date.
These two were dancing around their feelings all season and it wasn't until the finale when Joyce finally was like 'yes, I like you,
let's go on a date'.
And then immediately he died in like classic twist fashion.
So if Hopper comes back, will him enjoy his pick up right where they left off?
It's tough to say. Joyce may have moved on. She could have a new boyfriend.
He could be part Demagorgen. Who knows.
But I know that the stars and the fans really want them to get together.
If he's alive, I'm betting they're gonna get together at some point because this show panders.
And finally should season four be the final season of Stranger Things?
The Duffer's have always said they imagine the show going four, maybe five, seasons and we're at that point now.
I, for one, as much as I love this show, would love to see it go out on top with an amazing fourth season.
I think my ideal final season is that's when they bring Brenner back and it becomes about Eleven really dealing with
the person that Hawkins lab made her and, like, dealing with her trauma in that way.
Like I would like it to be more human-to-human as the central conflict with all like, you know, upside down stuff in the background rather than kids fighting a monster.
Right now every season has just seen the kids facing the same kind of upside down threat
but every time it just gets a little bit bigger and eventually
it's gonna get so big that it's not gonna feel like Stranger Things anymore. It won't be that fun, grounded, nostalgic adventure.
It'll be, just,
Corny.
Let us know what your hopes are for season four and if you think it should be the last season in the comments below.