It’s Official! Stranger Things Season 3 is actually happening! After an amazing run for the passed year on Netflix, and with the much anticipated release of Season 2, the fans are in frenzy over the news of Season 3. The news of the upcoming season was released this past Friday and cast and crew are also excited to be coming back as their beloved characters.
The series takes place in the fictional town of Hawkins, Indiana, where a secret government lab accidentally opens a door to another dimension referred to as the Upside Down, and have been experimenting on children taken from previous experiment participants. The show is based in the early 80’s, with the first season beginning in late October of 1983, and second season taking place exactly a year after the events of the first season.
The show stars Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, mother to Jonathan and Will Byers, David Harbour as Chief of Police Jim Hopper, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, love interest to Eleven and party leader to the boy’s Dungeons and Dragons game, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, the boy who is abducted and taken to the Upside Down and later returns to our dimension only to be abducted again in season two but in a different circumstance, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, the experiment and runaway from Hawkins Lab who have telekinetic powers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, one of the party members and one of Will Byers’ best friends, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, the last party member and one of Will Byers’ best friend, Cara Buono as Karen Wheeler, who is Mike and Nancy Wheeler’s mom, Natalia Dyer as Nancy Wheeler, Mike’s older sister, leader in #JusticeforBarb, and love interest to both Jonathan Byers and Steve Harrington, Charlie Heaton as Jonathan Byers, brother to Will Byers, and tag along to Nancy Wheeler when she goes looking for Barb and later looking for justice from all Hawkins Labs has done to the town, Joe Keery as Steve Harrington, the most surprising character development of the series, is the bad-guy turned mom, Dacre Montgomery as Billy, the antagonist to Steve and all the kids in season 2, step-brother to Max, and Sadie Sink as Max, the unexpected new party member in season 2 and the object of both Dustin and Lucas’s affection. The series also features Matthew Modine as Dr. Martin Brenner, the evil scientist who runs Hawkins Laboratory in Season one, Paul Reiser as Dr. Sam Owens, the friendlier and more unknowing version of Dr. Brenner in season two, and Sean Astin as Bob Newby, Joyce’s boyfriend and helpful ally to the kids in season two.
The Duffer brothers, Matt and Ross Duffer, created the series and serve as executive producers, as well as directors. Dan Cohen and Iain Patterson are also executive producers along with Shawn Levy, who also directs. The series is a Netflix production.
The first season proved to be a major sleeper hit, generating positive reviews and ratings and garnering a total 18 Emmy nominations, of which the show won five, and a SAG award win for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series . Both seasons currently hold a 94 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
And with Season 2 launched with a bang last month, Netflix does not reveal viewership information, but according to Nielsen, the first episode drew an eye-popping 15.8 million U.S. viewers in the first three days of release, with all nine new episodes averaging 4 million viewers over the three-day period.
In an interview with The Duffer Brothers and Shawn Levy, on the Beyond Stranger Things show, The Duffer Brothers commented on the fact that the show wasn’t supposed to do as well as it did, but that fans should know that the series is only meant to be a minimum of four seasons, maybe five at the most. This new season was intended to be set as a sequel to the first season. Which in all aspects, it was. The production design is completely different from the first, with better sets, better camera quality, and a better budget for this season. The story line offers new characters, more character development for older characters, and different team-ups than the first season, such as Steve and Dustin (the photo to the left).
Although fans will probably have to wait ’til at least early 2019 for the release of season third, the Duffer Brothers have promised this new season will be better than the last, while offering more scares, more kids cussing, more unlikely friendship bonds, more eggos, more kissing, and more 80’s nostalgia that fans can’t get enough of.
