Stranger Things Season 3: Everything We Know
Stranger Things Season 3 has been officially confirmed by Netflix.
The news certainly didn’t exactly blow anyone’s minds, considering that the show has become a certified pop culture phenomenon that has elevated itself and the aggregate of the streaming giant’s original content lineup into the stratosphere.
But when we do get Stranger Things Season 3, there will be a little less of it than we got before, according to TV Line. The third season will consist of 8 episodes, rather than 9 (which is what we got in season 2). That is, however, the same episode count as season one. In some ways, it’s rather refreshing that Stranger Things Season 3 won’t fall prey to the inflated episode counts we see on some streaming series.
Stranger Things Season 3 News
Filming is now underway…
Stranger Things Season 3 Release Date
In any case, we might have to wait a little longer for Stranger Things Season 3. The first season hit in July 2016, and the second season arrived in October 2017. We may have a similar gap this time, so don’t expect October 2018.
“I mean, one of the things that’s annoying for fans is that it takes us a long time to do them,” David Harbour told Variety. “Like, you probably won’t get [Season 3] until sometime in 2019. But also part of the thing is, like any good thing, they need time. And those guys work so hard. I mean, they just sit in their apartment and write for 12, 14 hours a day.”
With production just now getting underway, it might very well be spring or summer of 2019 before we see Stranger Things Season 3.
Stranger Things Season 3 Cast
Netflix just said (in a manner of speaking,) “as you wish” to fans with the latest casting acquisitions for Stranger Things Season 3.
Cary Elwes has been cast for a guest role as Mayor Kline. The character is described as “handsome, slick, and sleazy, your classic ’80s politician — more concerned with his own image than with the people of the small town he governs.” However, it was not specified if Kline presides over the show’s town setting of Hawkins, Indiana.
Elwes’s casting is another coup of a setting-appropriate former ‘80s star, since he is best known from his role as handsome hero Westley in the 1987 film classic, The Princess Bride, along with subsequent movie roles in Glory, Days of Thunder, Hot Shots!, Francis Ford Coppola-directed Bram Stoker’s Dracula and as the titular star of Mel Brooks comedy Robin Hood: Men in Tights, with later roles in Kiss the Girls, the original Saw, and a recurring TV role on The X-Files. His most recent work includes TV runs on Youth & Consequences and Life in Pieces and horror film Don’t Sleep.
Jake Busey has been cast for the role of Bruce. The character seems to be right up the actor’s alley, described as “a journalist for the The Hawkins Post with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.”
Jake, the second-generation actor son of Gary Busey, has been acting since childhood, first appearing in the 1978 crime drama, Straight Time, in which his father co-starred with Dustin Hoffman. After grown roles in 1990s films PCU, S.F.W., Twister, (Peter Jackson’s) The Frighteners and Contact, the junior Busey’s acting career took off into space, literally, as part of the ensemble of Starship Troopers, and has since been a steady player in film and television. His most recent roles include TV runs on Agents of SHIELD, Ray Donovan, Freakish and From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series. Amongst the upcoming film roles he has banked is a part in the upcoming sci-fi/action franchise revival, The Predator, in which he will, in poetic fashion, play the son of his father’s Predator 2 character government agent Peter Keyes.
Obviously our regulars will be back, but Netflix also named some other newcomers.
Priah Ferguson, who played Lucas’ little sister Erica, is now a series regular, so she’ll show up in all eight episodes this year. Considering how much fun she was in the few minutes of screentime we got with her in season two, this can only be a good thing.
Maya Thurman-Hawke will play “an ‘alternative girl’ bored with her mundane day job. She seeks excitement in her life and gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a dark secret in Hawkins” (description via Variety).
With this first bit of casting news, hopefully it means that the season will begin filming soon and we won’t have to wait too long.
Stranger Things Season 3 Story
“We’re thinking it will be a four-season thing and then out,” Ross Duffer told New York Magazine a while back. “We just have to keep adjusting the story,” said Matt. “Though I don’t know if we can justify something bad happening to them once a year.”
It’s true, after three straight years of monsters invading the town of Hawkins, Indiana, it might be time for the characters to pitch their tents elsewhere. “They’re going to have to get the fuck out of this town!” said Ross. “It’s ridiculous!”
Expect a time jump, though. Instead of moving from season 2’s 1983 to 1984, Stranger Things Season 3 will take place in 1985. “We can only write and produce the show so fast,” Matt Duffer told THR. “They’re going to be almost a year older by the time we start shooting season three. It provides certain challenges. You can’t start right after season two ended. It forces you to do a time jump. But what I like is that it makes you evolve the show. It forces the show to evolve and change, because the kids are changing.”
