Today I will be doing a spoiler-free review of season 3 of Stranger Things. This is my favorite season the show has made so far. The season is set around July 4th in the 80’s. A lot of this season is vibrant and different from what the previous two seasons have been. The concept and story are still the same but in the previous seasons, everything was dark or at night. This season is either during the day or in a very bright and vibrant environment. A lot of the kid characters are also starting to get older in this season, which I think only benefits the show, because the older they get the better actors/actresses they’re gonna be. The acting is probably the best in this season compared to the previous two. The adults are still just as good as they were, but the kids take such a great leap in all of their acting skills. All of the main characters are still the same as the previous two, they just added Billy who’s Max’s older brother. Another new character was Erica, who was Lucas’s little sister. The last new character was Robin, a girl who worked with Steve. My favorite characters this season are still Steve and Dustin. Their friendship is a major part of this season and it steals the show every time they’re on. Hopper is also really good while struggling to get the courage to ask out Joyce. One of my biggest issues with this season was how big of a backseat Will took. In the previous two seasons he was the second most important character in the show, but this season he just felt like an afterthought.
The villain of this season is still the Mind Flayer. He still terrorized certain characters (I won’t say who because of spoilers) through their mind. It would take over these characters’ minds and make them do what it wanted them to. The Mind Flayer also gets a true body this season and that ends up being a big part of the last few episodes. Speaking of the episodes, there were only 8 this season, but they were all fantastic. It was packed with barely any dry spots. The action in this season was phenomenal, and even though it had way more than the past two seasons, it still didn’t feel overused at all. The show did such a great job at making you feel like these characters were truly in danger at all times. The score was still fantastic this season as well, with just some of the best song choices for a show I’ve ever seen before. This season also tested something new I haven’t seen a show do before, but it worked perfectly. The show split up all of its main characters into groups for the entire season until all came together at the very end. My favorite group was easily Steve, Dustin, Robin, Lucas, and Erica. All of these characters had fantastic chemistry and bounced off each other so well.
I always rate shows I watch and I rate them based on 10 things in the show. Those things are action, acting, cinematography, pacing, score, characters, ending, plot, protagonist, and antagonist. I rate all of those pieces 1-10 and then after that, I add up the scores of all 10 of them and get a total score out of 100. I gave this season a 95/100 because everything was so well done this season. There isn’t a bad part about this season and everything is at least pretty good. The last thing I haven’t even talked about yet is the ending of this season. It was so perfectly done, I won’t say what they did, but they put together a fantastic and emotional ending. There was also something massive that happened to one of the main characters and there was one final scene that left a lot up in the air for the next season.
