Will Byers Says ‘Stranger Things 3’ Is Going to Be so Sad

From Good Housekeeping

• Stranger Things 3 will premiere on July 4, 2019.

• The season will be eight episodes long, all going up on Netflix at once.

• Few plot details have been announced, but new characters have been introduced.

Brothers Matt and Ross Duffer are gracing us with another season of Stranger Things on Netflix, and we are so, so close to the premiere. While details of Stranger Things 3 have been closely guarded for the past year, now that we're in the official lead-up to the release, new reviews, posters, trailers, tweets, and interviews give us some clues as to what to expect.

The good news is that the Duffers have promised that we'll get some lighthearted moments. "We would say that this is our most unapologetically fun season," Ross told Entertainment Weekly. On the other hand, they also told Digital Spy, "It also turns out to be our grossest season," citing horror masters like David Cronenberg and George Romero as inspiration. Here's what we know so far.

It's going to be emotional.

Look at this warning posted by Noah Schnapp, aka Will Byers, on Instagram Stories:

If that isn't a sign that you need to buy tissues before you start watching, I don't know what is. And early reviews seem to agree. "The action is exponentially bigger than the previous seasons," io9 reports in a spoiler-free review. "It’s funny, gross, sweet, and fun, and by the end, the whole thing gets so massive and exciting, you’re likely not to remember a few of the hiccups along the way." Early critics have given it a high score on Rotten Tomatoes, too (though with varying degrees of spoilers in the reviews behind them - you've been warned).

The release date is significant: July 4, 2019.

A holiday weekend - perfect for watching it all at once on the couch. (Hot dogs and fireworks are overrated, am I right?) This is a bit of a return to form, since Stranger Things first came out in July 2016, but Stranger Things 2 was released in October 2017, closer to Halloween.

Not only will the show return over Fourth of July, it also takes place over the holiday, too. The first trailer shows a mayor presiding over the opening of a town carnival amid fireworks. It brings up some serious Jaws nostalgia, since that movie takes place over Fourth of July, too, and features a mayor who refuses to close the town beach despite the presence of a monster (well, shark). The reference must be intentional, since we know the Duffer brothers are obsessed with Jaws director Steven Spielberg. (Eleven is basically E.T., right?)

The year is 1985.

The Duffer Brothers told The Hollywood Reporter why the new season can't immediately follow the last one. "Our kids are aging," Matt Duffer told the paper. "We can only write and produce the show so fast. They're going to be almost a year older by the time we start shooting season three ... it forces you to do a time jump."

So, how far is the jump? According to The New York Times, the show skipped forward to the summer of 1985. How can you tell? The Duffers said to keep an eye out for one pop-culture touchstone tied to that year: New Coke. The famous soda-reformulation-debacle will be featured in product placement in a few episodes. The company even made a limited number of cans of New Coke in celebration.

You know what else came out in 1985? The Goonies, which is a frequent Stranger Things comparison, since it's also about a group of plucky kids who band together to defeat evil. And Back to the Future also came out in 1985 - did the new Starcourt Mall in the trailer remind you at all of the "Twin Pine/Lone Pine" mall, where Marty first drove the Delorean?

New Coke isn't the only in the Stranger Things business.

If you're a super-fan, look for these Stranger Things experiences this summer.

• You might not be able to go to Scoops Ahoy, but Baskin-Robbins is rolling out Stranger Things flavors, including a U.S.S. Butterscotch and an Elevenade Freeze.

• Hasbro is also releasing a Stranger Things version of Dungeons and Dragons ( a starter set) and Trivial Pursuit (with all questions of about '80s pop culture), if you want an '80s-style game night. And if anyone wants to challenge me to the latter, I'll put a teeny bit of money down that I can beat you, because that is my trivia wheelhouse.

• Levi's is introducing a Stranger Things collection of clothing, in case you want any Dad Jeans or one of Eleven's crazy-printed shirts. H&M and Forever 21 have them, too.

• Don't forget shoes: Choose either Havaianas or Nikes.

• This Demogorgon lawn sprinkler cracks me up. Who wouldn't want to run through the spit of a six-foot-tall monster this summer?

There will be new characters, and bigger roles for some returning favorites.

We already talked about how a Jaws-like mayor, Mayor Larry Kline, will be played by Carey Elwes. In 1985, Elwes IRL was still two years away from his iconic role as Westley in The Princess Bride (aka my first true love). So far, Elwes has been cryptic about his role. The first thing he did when he was cast, though, was to endear himself to fans in the best way - by posing for a Polaroid with Joe Keery, who plays Steve. "Stranger things have happened," is his caption.

Also, when Netflix announced the titles of the episodes back in December, Elwes added another cryptic message to his Twitter: "It's going to get stranger ... trust me."

But Elwes isn't the only addition for Stranger Things 3. Jake Busey will also join the cast as Bruce, who Variety reports is “a journalist for the The Hawkins Post, with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.” Busey gave more details about his character to Bloody Disgusting: "This is a character who is fully living in that time period. He doesn’t mind making fun of women and children," he told the site. "They always had a cigarette hanging out of their mouth and they were foul-mouthed guys. They were all about getting to the bottom line and the truth." Well, if he's working in Hawkins, there's a lot of dirt to dig through, and a lot buried underneath it, so his work is cut out for him.

The most intriguing new character is arguably Robin, who works with Steve at "Scoops Ahoy," some kind of nautically themed ice cream parlor. According to Deadline, the character "is described as an alternative girl who is equal parts sharp and playful." Robin is played by Maya Hawke, daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, who took on the role of Jo March in a BBC adaptation of Little Women and also has an upcoming part in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

And, while she's not new, everyone loved Erica - Lucas's smart-alec little sister - in Stranger Things 2, so the Duffers happily announced that she's returning in an expanded role. “There will definitely be more Erica in Season 3,” Ross Duffer told Yahoo!. “We got to use more Erica’ - that was one of the first things we said in the writers’ room.”

On the opposite end of the spectrum, while he's nobody's favorite, Billy will also get more of a chance to win us over. "Billy was supposed to have a bigger role," Matt Duffer told Vulture. "We ended up having so many characters it ended up, in a way, more teed up for Season Three than anything."

The quickest way to make him seem more palatable to audiences who have only seen his bad side so far? Parade him around shirtless at the pool, like they did with the most recent trailer.

And monsters, of course.

A month out from the premiere, Stranger Things released a new poster. It starts out fine at the top - there's fireworks, a sign for the new mall, all good. Then we see the characters, who look serious and ready for battle, setting up a more menacing tone. Then at the bottom: Bam! A monster! And if it wasn't already gross enough in its own right, with its crab-like legs, it has a trail of dead rats in its wake. Yuck! The kids aren't done defeating evil in this town.

If the monster looks familiar, it could be that the producers promised the return of the Mind Flayer, aka the big baddie from Stranger Things 2. But then again, they also say there's some new evil in the works, so we really don't know what's coming.

The Duffers told Entertainment Weekly that one of the movies that inspired Stranger Things 3 was John Carpenter's classic The Thing (from 1982, so roughly the same time period). In that movie, researchers in Antarctica are plagued by a parasitic being that's able to assimilate into/imitate other humans - is this a hint that some of the people in Hawkins are going to turn out to be Upside-Downers in disguise? We'll just have to see.

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