Created By: The Duffer Brothers

Main Cast: Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton, Cara Buono, Noah Schanpp, Sadie Sink, Joe Keery, Dacre Montgomery, Maya Hawke, Priah Ferguson

Introduction

So, Stranger Things 3 has finally dropped.

For the most part, the show has so far coasted on being a pastiche of a specific image of the 1980’s—the main characters play D&D, the genre trappings are very Stephen King, and it’s very fond of 80’s synth music, amongst other things. Other people have pointed out that Stranger Things is a series highly predicated on its intertextuality (for sake of convenience, let’s just point at Lindsey Ellis). What’s curious, then, is how the basic shape of Stranger Things 3 actually changes this logic. Slightly. Very slightly. But it does change it. Also, yeah, this is going to be just a dash spoiler-y. So, spoiler warning.

A Spectre is haunting Hawkins—the spectre of Communism

The first thing that’s apparent about Stranger Things 3 is half of the plot is a riff on the 1950’s film Invasion of the Body Snatchers. This doesn’t immediately spring to mind as an overly 1980’s piece of pop culture, in marked contrast to something like D&D. What we have, then, is a sense that the Duffer Brothers have started exploring a new set of of pulp texts and aesthetics they are now reworking within the show’s well established 80’s aesthetic. So what we get is something that’s basically Invasion of the Body Snatchers colliding with the pop culture image of Lovecraftian cosmic horror.  This isn’t exactly a revolutionary take—the logic of Invasion of the Body Snatchers is firmly embedded in our popular culture. But what’s interesting here is how the Duffer Brothers introduce a second plot thread—the Soviets infiltrating the United States at the same time as our Invasion of the Body Snatchers infiltration is occurring—and so we get something of an explicit paralleling of the two and, in the process, returning the plot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers to its (semi-)original context. Invasion of the Body Snatchers is the archetypical “Red Scare” film—of Pods hiding under the bed and in car boots and turning poor innocent Americans into spies for the Other.

On the one hand, this is just the Duffer Brothers trying to find new angles to keep the show’s narrative feeling fresh. And yet, it’s curious how the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers and Russian plot creep into the narrative arc of the season—a new shopping mall (the pointedly named “Starcourt”) which has gutted the local economy of Hawkins turns out to be part of the literal Communist Russian plot, and the mayor of Hawkins is an accessory to a Russian plan to buy up local land in an attempt to re-open Stranger Things’ very own Hellmouth—the gateway to the Upside Down (a realm that is particularly notable this season by its haunting absence).

The Invasion of the Bodysnatchers plot, meanwhile, mostly manifests in the Mind Flayer (our big Lovecraftian entity left defeated by not destroyed at the end of Stranger Things 2) possessing Hawkins’ local sociopath Billy (Dacre Montgomery) and using him as its primary agent throughout its infiltration plot—kidnapping members of the local community for possession—which also involves taking control of the staff of Hawkins’ local newspaper, The Hawkins Post. The result of this is that Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathon Byers (Charlie Heaton), interning at the Post over the summer and having stumbled upon this Lovecraftian conspiracy, face establishment resistance which culminates in the possessed staff of The Hawkins Post attacking the couple while they investigate a hospital to prevent them uncovering and revealing the truth.

Both of these are… very specific plot manifestations of the Red Scare theme, especially in the Year of Our Lord 2019 where neo-Red Scare conspiracy theories of “Cultural Marxism” and a Socialist plot to undermine America are often associated with economic globalism harming local economies and a specific media culture allegedly quashing undesirable truths.

There’s also certainly the choice, given that the Mind Flayer’s plot is informed both by an evocation of the classic Red Scare film plot and the parallel between its infiltration of Hawkins with the Russian infiltration of Hawkins (essentially coding the Mind Flayer as its own form of “communist” threat) for the main cast to weaponise fireworks against the Mind Flayer (readily available for the main cast to use as well, seeing as this season happens around and on July 4 and Hawkins’ local Independence Day celebrations—so basically, Invasion of the Body Snatchers communist Eldritch abomination is weak to MURICA’S Independence Day fireworks). Whether this is just uncritical indulgence in its Independence Day setting or overt nationalist storytelling is something I can’t really say at this stage, although there’s certainly a cacophony of patriotic/nationalist themes lingering here in the season’s myth-arc.

But this is all thematic content. The Duffer Brothers are perhaps finding themselves in the same territory that a writer like Robert Holmes found himself in with his Doctor Who work (specifically, the slightly problematic classic The Talons of Weng Chiang which has a name alone that is something of a red flag)—their pastiche and tendency towards creating an intertextual narrative is perhaps a little too uncritical of the texts that form part of its narrative tapestry.

So let’s basically say that the overall myth-arc, of sorts, for this season seemed to err a little on the side of “yikes” for me.

There’s nothing “only” about being a girl

This isn’t to say that the most recent season of Stranger Things was a dire anti-left piece of conservative media. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the strongest part of Stranger Things was its characters—or, well, a specific set of characters to be precise. The season opens with Hopper (David Harbour) being just a bit of an asshole as he finds various new ways to control the life of his surrogate daughter Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) as he aims to repress Eleven and preserve a specific father-daughter relationship with her—such as, in an egregiously abusive fashion, threatening her boyfriend Mike (Finn Wolfhard) with violence. This does result in some very endearing content however, as Eleven turns to Max (Sadie Sink) as something of a new BFF in the aftermath of her (ultimately temporary) breakup with Mike.

The Party is overwhelmingly male which in and of itself isn’t a bad thing so much as a thing which exists, with Eleven and Max being the sole female members of the Party as well as the most recent additions to the friend circle (Eleven joining the pre-existing group in the show’s first season, and Max being one of the new main character additions in the second season). With Eleven off in her own separate plot for much of Stranger Things 2, this is the first real chance we have had to see this specific character combination, and the subsequent montage of the pair larking through the mall having fun is really fun. It also allows Max to fulfil a new role in the narrative—she’s not just the “new girl” now or Lucas’ girlfriend, she’s also Eleven’s female best friend and her part in this new double act allows her to involve herself as a fresh voice in the ongoing tensions between Mike and Eleven throughout the season. Basically, the Duffer Brothers have found a new dynamic within the Party and it’s certainly a refreshing one.

This isn’t just an isolated aspect of the plot—the new main character Robin (Maya Hawke), co-worker of fan-favourite Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) at the ridiculously silly ice cream parlour “Scoop’s Ahoy”, asserts herself within the narrative remarkably strongly. Robin as a character also offers a new angle on one of the previous season’s surprisingly effective character combinations—namely, the double act that was Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) and Steve’s odd brotherly friendship—a dynamic that the show returns to in Stranger Things 3 as the pair investigate the Russian presence in the Starcourt Mall. 

Ironically Robin becomes something of a snarky straight-man to the occasionally funny-man antics of Dustin and Steve within this new mini-ensemble, especially as it’s this ensemble that the Duffer Brothers use to explore the “Russians in the Mall” arc. While the Dustin-Steve duo are playing at being dorky spies while Robin actually approaches it more as a logic puzzle with rules that she, as opposed to the two established male characters, understands.

That the obvious outcome of Robin’s inclusion in the season—Steve’s new co-worker is the replacement for Steve’s sunk ship with Nancy—is actually rejected (because it turns out Robin is queer) is kinda refreshing seeing as Stranger Things has seemed adamant about pairing off its main characters in various straight ships (Lucas/Max, Mike/Eleven, Jonathon/Nancy, the will-they-won’t-they arc between Hopper and Joyce), compounded by this season’s running gag that Dustin has a girlfriend who lives in another state. Suzie, who actually turns out to be very real, is absolutely the sort of girl Dustin would fall for—an utter nerd whose official couple song with Dustin is the theme to The Neverending Story. Perhaps including their duet of the song itself is an overly indulgent beat, but considering that the title of my blog is “Chair with a Panda” let’s concede that a cute and whimsical beat like this is definitely in the spirit of the things this blog is inclined to like (and it’s a very cute beat at that). Pairing off all the main characters in a given show can sometimes get very boring, so this season’s exploration of female friendships and even an explicit rejection of another straight romance are definitely incredibly welcome arcs.

A Death in the Family

Seeing as this is something of a first response to Stranger Things 3, some of my thoughts are still rather unformed. I’m unsure what to make of Hopper’s arc this season, for instance. As I mentioned earlier when discussing Eleven, Hopper opens the season as a controlling asshole, and at the season’s climax he’s given what the show clearly intends as a tragic, and redemptive, heroic sacrifice. Of the show’s original protagonists from Stranger Things’ first season, Hopper is therefore the first character to die. The epilogue to this season, quite rightly then, lingers on his loss. David Harbour performs a farewell to his character by reading a speech, written earlier in the season by Hopper about his own emotional arc and his connection with his surrogate-daughter Eleven, which had previously been left unspoken. This is all framed by Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) finding the speech written on sheets of paper and passing Hopper’s confession to Eleven herself, bringing some closure to their father-daughter relationship as the series heads into a Hopper-less future.

Perhaps he’s not dead though, as a mid-credits tease hints at the Russians having an “American” prisoner in their secret base (which also includes a pet Demogorgon, hello!), but for all intents and purposes the show treats this as the end of Hopper’s story. It’s certainly one of the ballsiest moves the show has pulled, rendering the main cast more vulnerable going forward and emotionally affecting two of the show’s most totemic characters (Joyce and Eleven), but I’m personally unsure if this is an effective arc for Hopper (beginning as an assholish, over-protective dad before receiving something of a “redemptive” heroic sacrifice with emotional closure, or if it’s just overly muddled because Hopper got given an idiot ball this year).

Conclusion

So this is a first response. Let’s not keep this going for longer than it should be. Let’s cut it off here, and basically leave this as my final, vaguely defined first impression of Stranger Things 3: Red Scare plot uncritically generic if not yikes, interesting new things for the show’s female characters to do yay, I’m unsure about how Hopper was handled but there’s definitely a take that it was good somewhere there. It’s a season kinda doing very Stranger Things stuff with its overall generic genre plot, but also a season trying to push its female characters in various interesting ways and trying out new combinations within its now well-established ensemble. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with the show going into its fourth season, but the future looks a little less strange and a lot more ordinary for Stranger Things.