As the final season of Stranger Things draws near, our Hellfire Club catch-up covers the events of season three’s action-packed summer.
If you haven’t yet, you can also refresh your memory on seasons one and two!
The Battle of Starcourt is the all-time showstopping catalyst event in the series so far as a red threat rises in the sleepy town of Hawkins. The Duffer Brothers’ show really fires on all cylinders in season three, which, in our opinion, is the best season of the Netflix franchise so far. It’s a true television epic with engaging character dynamics and the Upside Down lore growing more mysteriously intriguing.
Here’s what you need to remember from the season where the kids started to come of age—and faced both teen horrors and real-life ones.
The Mind Flayer survived
After El (Millie Bobby Brown) sealed the rift to the Upside Down in season two, the bit of the Mind Flayer that left Will (Noah Schnapp) survived. To get back to its full powers in the real world, it picks Billy (Dacre Montgomery) as a host and sets about trying to absorb new lives. The more people it claims, the bigger it grows, harnessing the sliver of energy emanating from the healing rift—which might not be able to fully close now thanks to some new suspicious activity.
There’s a new threat in town
After a blackout, Joyce (Winona Ryder) notices that suddenly all the town’s magnets no longer work. Sure, it’s a small thing but call it mother’s intuition and PTSD from everything that went down in Hawkins National Laboratory; it is enough for her to tell Hopper that something is amiss. Initially she thinks it’s HNL but Hopper (David Harbour) swears he ran them out of town.
Steve and the Scoops Troop
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is still hanging around Steve (Joe Keery) while he works at the new Starcourt Mall Scoops Ahoy location. While there, Steve parents the rest of the gang from behind the counter with the help of free ice cream. When Dustin uses his radio to communicate with his long-distance camp sweetheart, he discovers a series of suspicious Russian calls and records them. He enlists Steve and his co-worker Robin (Maya Hawke) to translate, which leads to the discovery that the Russians have infiltrated their town.
Nancy and Jonathan on the case
When a series of rat infestations draw enough suspicion, Nancy (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) investigate the mysterious disease that they’re carrying. The rats are drawn to eating chemicals, including fertilizer, and after eating enough of it, the critters burst into sentient goo, which also infects the living. As Nance and Jonathan follow an old lady, who becomes part of the Mind Flayer hive horde, they discover that more and more people are going missing after feasting on household chemicals.
Starcourt Mall secrets
Hopper beats the truth out of Mayor Kline (Cary Elwes), who confesses that he helped broker the sale of land to the Russians that Starcourt Mall was built on as well as land around the lake next to HNL. After investigating the abandoned lab, he and Joyce kidnap Dr. Alexei (Alec Utgoff) and take him to an off-the-grid Murray (Bret Gelman), who happens to know Russian, in order to find out just what the Russians want with Hawkins.
Meanwhile, Dustin, with the help of Steve, Robin, and Lucas’ little sister Erica (Priah Ferguson), breaks into the high-security base beneath the mall. They find that the Russians are powering an energy beam to rip the rift to the Upside Down open again but before they can escape, they’re caught.
The Mindflayer feasts on Hawkins
Billy lures more and more people to melt into the sentient goo that helps the Mind Flayer be reborn. It’s a hive mind that Will begins to sense through the part of him that still has a connection to it. He lets the gang know that “he” is back once enough people have been taken over.
Relationship drama
This season’s personal drama between every character really heightens the tension of the imminent danger. The season starts out with El and Mike (Finn Wolfhard) being teens in love, much to the consternation of Hop, who is an overprotective dad. Joyce tries to help Hopper establish boundaries out of the love he has for his daughter but it kind of blows up before he can, and Hopper threatens Mike into cooling his relationship with El. In response, El knows something is up and breaks up with Mike but gets to find her agency through her friendship with Max (Sadie Sink).
Hopper’s anger issues give his character a weird vibe this season. For one thing, he’s really bent on getting Joyce to go to dinner with him soon after Bob’s death and gets really drunk when she stands him up. Then for the rest of the season, he is inexplicably jealous when she talks to any other guy. It’s mostly played for laughs since Joyce and Hopper are a very obvious endgame. Joyce redirects his frustrations by getting him to help with the Russians, namely by beating up the Russian Temu Terminator, who’s on their trail.
Jonathan and Nancy also get their own relationship drama to work through. When they’re both interning at the Hawkins Post, Jonathan gets a taste of male privilege as he immediately gets work as a photographer, while Nancy gets stuck on coffee duty. Likewise, Max and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) are also sort of going through it too as they help El and Mike by picking sides.
The Russians do a Red Dawn
All the pieces come together when it becomes clear that the Russians want to use their key to gain access to the Upside Down, while not knowing they’re aiding the Mind Flayer’s growth as it tries to wipe out the town. Joyce and Hopper join forces with Alexei to help stop it and when they team up with the kids, they get guided into the base below Starcourt.
Hawkins vs Mind Flayer
Meanwhile, the Mind Flayer starts to target El to destroy her and absorb her powers. It remembers what she did and, through Billy, tells her it wants to destroy everything she loves and then kill her. She uses so much of her powers when it attacks them that it zaps her. The Mind Flayer cannot be destroyed as long as the rift isn’t fully sealed so her friends team up for a last stand at Starcourt, which involves fireworks and El tapping into her empathy to get Billy on their side. After seeing his memories, she reminds him of his love for his mother and not the darkness that made him vulnerable to the Mind Flayer, which seems to target the weak and fearful for power. Billy protects El as Joyce and Hopper stop the Russians’ key.
Hopper’s sacrifice
The Temu Terminator shows up as Joyce and Hopper try to stop the key. He and Hopper face off right by the beam, which goes haywire when it’s struck in the fistfight. Hopper looks at Joyce to let her know to let him sacrifice himself in order to save the town.
Three months later Joyce and the kids, including El, are preparing to move away and break up the Hawkins gang. Eleven finds Hopper’s letter he meant to read to her and Mike as a sendoff to the character. But it’s not much of one, as the end credits scene introduces us to another base in Russia where prisoners are being pitted against Demogorgons and “the American” isn’t chosen… yet.
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