It’s been almost three years since the battle at Starcourt Mall, and unless you’ve done a recent rewatch or you have a memory only comparable to a galaxy-brained god, you’ve most likely forgotten what happened in season 3 of Stranger Things.
Season 4 will be broken into two volumes released on May 27 and July 1 respectively, and considering that is just around the corner, it’s worth diving back into all the important plot points and character moments that transpired to get us here.
So, grab a slingshot and your hairspray, and let’s mosey on back through the Upside Down…
What happened in Season 3?
Season 3 starts one year after Eleven closed the gate to the Upside Down. It’s the summer of 1985, and we are immediately thrown into the complexities of what else, but teenage romance. Lucas and Max are a couple, and so are Eleven and Mike – which puts Hopper in protective father mode. Dustin has returned from camp, and he, too, reveals that he has a girlfriend named Suzie. The group become doubtful of Dustin’s newfound love when he reveals that Suzie is a Mormon and can’t talk on the phone. So, he sets up a radio tower at the highest point in Hawkins in the hope of reaching her.
Meanwhile, the super rad Starcourt Mall has just opened in Hawkins, and it’s filled with everything from The Gap to Jazzercise. We find out that Steve ‘the hair’ Harrington didn’t get into college and is now working at the mall in an ice-cream parlour, Scoops Ahoy, beside a former classmate named Robin. Steve is struggling with the fact his popularity hasn’t carried beyond the walls of Hawkins Highschool and is now serving ice cream in a sailor’s outfit.
As for Nancy and Jonathon, they are interning at the Hawkins Post. During a particularly frustrating day, Nancy discovers that there’s something wrong with Mrs Driscoll, a woman they meet on an investigation. Meanwhile, at the Byers residence, Joyce is becoming more concerned that magnets are falling from her fridge, and all poor Will wants to do is to play D&D with his distracted, lovestruck friends.
It all comes to a head when Billy, while working at the community pool, sets himself up for a rendezvous with Mrs Wheeler until he crashes his car on the way. He is pulled into a warehouse and possessed by the Mind Flayer.
As time passes, the crew begin to pick up on various threads that something is very wrong in Hawkins. Dustin intercepts a Russian message, which is successfully decoded by Robin, and they realise that the Russians are using the mall to receive secret shipments. Meanwhile, El uses her powers and discovers that Billy has been possessed, so the kids track him down to help. After a very intense battle at the sauna where Billy tries to kill Eleven, the Scoops Troop (Steve, Robin and Dustin) ask Lucas’ younger sister, Erica, to climb into a vent so they can have access to the Russian shipments. However, the plan goes awry, and the Scoops Troop end up stuck in a Russian base.
In another part of town, Hopper and Joyce discover that Starcourt Mall, among many other properties in Hawkins, are a Russian front. They find themselves face-to-face with Alexei, a Russian scientist. They travel to Murray’s house, who translates Alexei’s Russian to English, and by doing so, they learn that the Russians have infiltrated Hawkins with the sole purpose of reopening the gate to the Upside Down.
This sets all teams onto a course to Starcourt Mall. The plan is to kill the Mind Flayer and close the gate. El, Mike, Will, Max and Lucas prepare an attack on the Mind Flayer, while Hopper, Joyce and Murray head over to the Russian base. Scoops Troop arrive at Dustin’s radio tower to successfully communicate with Hop, Joyce and Murray. When they need Planck’s constant to open the door to the Russian base, Dustin calls Suzie, and she agrees to share the number only if he sings their own rendition of The Neverending Story theme song. Joyce and Hopper open the door and successfully make it to the gate.
Meanwhile, Billy attacks Eleven and prepares to sacrifice her to the Mind Flayer, until Eleven recalls a memory from Billy’s childhood. As the rest of the crew attack the Mind Flayer with fireworks, Billy makes the ultimate sacrifice to protect Eleven and dies. At the Russian base, Hopper and Joyce are attacked while trying to close the gate. Hopper is fighting a Russian mercenary and can’t get away from the gate in time before Joyce needs to close it. Joyce closes the gate with Hopper still inside, which kills the Mind Flayer and apparently kills Hopper too – more on that later.
Fast forward three months and Hawkins is grieving Hopper and thirty other Hawkins residents. Eleven has lost her powers and Mike ensures her they will come back. Eleven reads an emotional letter that Hopper had never shared with her, and she moves away from Hawkins with Joyce, Jonathan and Will.
In a post-credit’s scene, we see a secret facility in Russia where a prisoner is about to be fed to a Demogorgon. The guards say “not the American” – which (we all guessed correctly) is Hopper.
So! What can we expect from Season 4?
A ‘new and horrifying threat’…
Netflix posted the official plot summary for the upcoming season, which says: “It’s been six months since the Battle of Starcourt, which brought terror and destruction to Hawkins. Struggling with the aftermath, our group of friends are separated for the first time – and navigating the complexities of high school hasn’t made things any easier. In this most vulnerable time, a new and horrifying supernatural threat surfaces, presenting a gruesome mystery that, if solved, might finally put an end to the horrors of the Upside Down.”
What, or who, could this threat be?
“You’ve broken everything. Your suffering is almost at an end…” an ominous voice says in the first 20 seconds of the official trailer. We now know that voice belongs to our big bad, Vecna. It can be assumed that Vecna is the physical representation of the Upside Down. The monster at the end of a D&D game. However, Vecna’s role has been kept extremely quiet. Who is Vecna and what do they want?
Max has a big part to play…
Max has just lost Billy to the Mind Flayer, and her part in the story has grown. Matt Duffer told IGN, “So much of the season is about Max. We open the season with her struggling with her grief and her trying to navigate that…a lot of what she’s dealing with, she’s struggling with internally, she’s shut a lot of people out, which makes it even that much more difficult.”
Considering Max is levitating in the trailer, it will be interesting to see if Vecna considers her target number one, using her isolation as an advantage.
The Creel House and that clock:
The clock has been a consistent part of the Stranger Things promotional material. Though little is known about it, the Duffer Brothers have stated that is deliberate. It will be a huge piece of unlocking the mystery of the Upside Down, and it will play a very significant role in Season 4. Another part of that mystery is the Creel family, who we have seen in the teasers. Ross Duffer told Collider, “Hawkins, which is kind of the centre for our horror story, has the Creel House which is a major new sort of haunted house location. What occurs in that house is pivotal to understanding what has been happening in Hawkins all of these years.”
The bigger picture…
Every season has been just another taste into what’s occurring in the Upside Down. However, we seem to be pulling together the threads in Season 4. Ross Duffer told Deadline, “Each season we’re just sort of peeling back the layers of that onion, so to speak. But this season, we really wanted to really get into it and [reveal] some of those answers. But to do that properly, we needed time, so it just became bigger and bigger.”
Netflix has released the episode titles for Season 4: Volume 1, which is interesting to think about when piecing together theories about the plot.
1: The Hellfire Club
2: Vecna’s Curse
3: The Monster and The Superhero
4: Dear Billy
5: The Nina Project
6: The Dive
7: The Massacre at Hawkins Lab
8: Papa
9: The Piggyback
It’s shaping up to be a dark and exciting season. We can expect to see an array of new faces, new locations, and buried threats from Hawkins’ history resurfacing. With the mystery getting a whole lot deeper, it’s thrilling to finally say that Stranger Things is back.
Stranger Things Season 4 releases in two volumes on May 27 and July 1.