The final trailer for the upcoming third season of Stranger Things drops plenty of hints about
the characters' journeys.
We also get some big clues about the villains of the season, as well as a few obligatory
'80s Easter eggs.
Let's take a look at the small details you may have missed.
The third season of Stranger Things will be the first that doesn't take place during Halloween.
Netflix revealed that season 3 would be dropping on Independence Day 2019 with a special date
announcement, and the 4th of July holiday will also be the setting of the show this
year.
The final season 3 trailer opens with a wide shot of a 4th of July fun fair sponsored by
Mayor Kline.
A new character for season 3, Larry Kline is portrayed by Cary Elwes, star of '80s classic
The Princess Bride.
"But in the meantime, rest well and dream of large women."
Promotional materials for the show describe Kline as "handsome, slick and sleazy… your
classic '80s politician."
It looks like the mayor will be a secondary villain of sorts, but could his arc tie in
to a previously unexplored plot?
We're going back to Hawkins in the summer of 1985, at the height of the Cold War.
Theory crafters are predicting that the Duffers will return to the Russian spy subplot planted
by journalist-turned-private investigator Murray Bauman in season 2.
"Russian spies!
Are the Russian spies in cahoots with the aliens?
Or how do they fit in here?"
"It doesn't make sense.
I closed the gate."
With that line, Eleven is obviously referring to the moment she used her psychokinetic powers
to seal the portal to the Upside Down at the end of season 2, seemingly saving Hawkins
from the monstrous creatures that dwell on the other side.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that the Upside Down would feature in the coming
third season, however, and the final trailer confirms that this will indeed be the case.
We see Eleven in her sense-depriving blindfold early on in the trailer, surrounded by her
concerned friends.
Her trademark nosebleed tells us that she's using her special abilities, and the following
shot shows that she's in the hellscape that is the Upside Down, standing in front of a
large steelworks warehouse.
This warehouse appears to be the hideout of the evil that will be unleashed this coming
season.
We see a swarm of rats converging on the place, and a dark smoke-like entity whirling its
way through the empty corridors.
But is this entity a new foe, or one the gang has faced before?
Inside the Brimborn warehouse there's a brief but unmistakable shot of the Mind Flayer,
the creature that took control of Will Byers in season 2.
The young heroes of Hawkins thought they'd locked the Mind Flayer in the Upside Down,
but as Byers points out, they don't know that for sure.
"What if we locked him out here with us?"
Byers is clearly still connected to the Mind Flayer in some way, and he drops a huge clue
about the malevolent entity's intentions for season 3 in the last trailer, saying that
it'll be looking for a new host.
The face of Billy Hargrove appears onscreen as Byers utters the words, heavily implying
that the season 2 bully will become an even bigger threat to the kids this time out.
There's an ominous voiceover in the trailer that has everybody scratching their heads.
It begins right at the start of the trailer, playing over some lingering shots of our tween
heroes.
"You let us in."
The same voice can be heard later in the trailer:
"We are going to end you, we are going to end your friends."
The owner of the voice is never identified, and there are a lot of theories, but listen
closely, and voice sounds an awful lot like Jake Busey, a new addition to the Stranger
Things cast.
He's playing a character called Bruce, a reporter from The Hawkins Post who has, quote, "questionable
morals and a sick sense of humor."
Is he going to be an important villain?
Well put it this way: it's probably no coincidence that Busey's character shares a name with
the shark from Steven Spielberg's Jaws.
"Bruce got his name because my lawyer's name, I named the shark after my lawyer.
He's still my lawyer by the way."
We got our first good look at season 3 newbie Maya Hawke in the Starcourt mall teaser that
Netflix dropped in July 2018.
Hawke plays a character named Robin, a co-worker of Steve Harrington at the sparkly new mall's
Scoops Ahoy ice cream parlor.
The first season 3 trailer showcased Robin in this capacity, but now we know for sure
that she's going to be doing way more than just scooping ice cream − there's a shot
of her peering through a glass door at something that's probably not from this dimension.
Another bewildering moment in the trailer is when Steve and Dustin unearth a canister
filled with something peculiar, and judging by what Harrington is wearing at the time,
he's in the middle of a shift at Scoops Ahoy.
It's one of the standout shots from the final trailer, and it seems to indicate that something
is going on in the bowels of the Starcourt mall.
The next two shots feature people in hazmat suits gathered around what appears to be some
kind of particle collider.
The machine fires up and shoots a white beam of energy, which could well be the cause of
the blackout at the end of the trailer.
But who is experimenting under the mall?
"It's alive"
The Hawkins National Laboratory was shut down after it was linked to the death of season
1 fan favorite Barbara Holland, though there are bound to be plenty of other interested
parties when it comes to unlocking the secrets of the Upside Down.
There's lots of quick editing in the final season 3 trailer, but if you watch it back
a couple of times you'll notice that a few different teams seem to have formed by the
end.
Eleven, Mike, and Max cower together behind a counter, while Will, Jonathan, Nancy, and
Lucas take cover behind a battered car.
Steve, Dustin, Robin, and Erica appear to escape the mall.
Lastly, there are the adults: Hopper, Joyce and Murray.
Joyce Byers had a thing with Sean Astin's Bob Newby in season 2, but the Radio Shack
manager was killed helping the gang escape.
Bob wasn't unpopular, but most Stranger Things fans have been shipping a Joyce-Hopper relationship
since the early days of the show.
A blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in the final trailer all but confirms that they'll make
the leap in season 3.
The shot is a close-up of two unidentified people holding hands.
Pause it, and you'll notice that the shirts they're wearing match the ones worn by Joyce
and Hopper earlier in the trailer.
David Harbour is aware of how much people want this, and he gets it.
"The fans, they call it like 'Jopper,' or something.
They all ship this relationship with Hopper and Joyce and I do too, because I feel like
they're two really lonely, lost people."
Stranger Things just wouldn't be Stranger Things without all the '80s Easter eggs, and
there are going to be plenty of those in the upcoming third season.
Ross Duffer kept his cards close when IndieWire asked him which films he and his brother would
be referencing this time out, but the final season 3 trailer contains a few subtle clues.
Lucas, for example, wears an outfit reminiscent of The Karate Kid.
One of the most blatant nods to an iconic movie comes when Max, Eleven and Mike take
cover behind a counter in the mall.
The shot is super similar to the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park, which is of course an
early '90s movie, but seeing as it's directed by Steven Spielberg, it's fair game.
The Duffer brothers have made no secret of the fact that they're heavily into Spielberg,
naming E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Jaws as big influences.
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