What the New Year’s poster and trailer for Stranger Things Season 3 tells us

Netflix has finally announced the release of Stranger Things Season 3 and released the first promo image for the season.

After what has felt like an eternity, we still don’t have Stranger Things Season 3 yet, but at least we now have a trailer and poster to hold us over. At midnight last night, the first minute of New Year’s Day, Netflix released a new trailer for Stranger Things Season 3 announcing the official release date to be July 4, 2019.

In addition to the trailer was a poster very appropriate for both New Year and the Fourth of July. It shows the six main characters in a clearing under celebratory fireworks. They couldn’t have released it at a better time.

Caution: There are spoilers from this point about Stranger Things Season 2.

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Season 2 ended with Eleven “El” shutting the gate to the Upside Down and trapping the Mind Flayer inside. Will is once again in control of his own body and some of the kids are all feeling the sparks of young love. Mike and Eleven became an official couple and Maxine “Max” and Lucas had their first kiss. The final scene of the episode was the Mind Flayer watching from the Upside Down.

However, the happiness won’t last forever. Judging by the Season 3 poster, the Flayer has found a way back to Earth, or the Rightside Up (I don’t know what to call the “normal” dimension). At the bottom of the image is a spider-like pair of legs standing behind the six kids, though only two see him: Will and El.

Will is clearly not forgotten by the Mind Flayer, nor has he forgotten it. He and El share a connection with the Upside Down so I think we can look forward to a Will-El team up this season. The future step-siblings (because you know Hooper and Joyce are going to get hitched one day) are also standing on the same side of the picture, both looking over their shoulders at the monster behind them.

According to the Duffer brothers, Will won’t be playing the victim this time. Showing his awareness of the monster suggests he’ll get bumped up to the role of hero. As he should be. The one mentally and physically violated by bodily possession should be the one to kill the spider-demon-thing.

However, while things are looking up for Will, Eleven’s future may be taking a darker turn. This is the first poster for the series where El isn’t staring into the camera with a “don’t mess with me” glare, the same look she gets before she explodes someone’s brains or breaks their neck. Yeah, don’t mess with her. For the first two seasons, she came off as someone in constant fighter mode, but now she can finally relax and have a normal life.

Unfortunately, this luxury has possibly made her more vulnerable. With her hand tightly secured in Mike’s, she doesn’t look ready for battle; she looks frightened.

Will and El are the only two out of the six who notice the evil lurking behind them. The rest happily look on at the fireworks, except for Mike who is looking at the center of his world: Eleven. Nothing’s changed there.

The season will be set in the summer of 1985, The Summer of Love, and by the looks of the rest of the gang, everything is going good. Do Dustin, Max and Lucas think the Mind Flayer is gone? They cheer on with the fireworks, completely oblivious to what’s going on around them. The kids are also all alone in the woods, in fact the image creates a very isolated feeling.

The town sits in the distance alight for the holiday but the kids are way out in the dark woods in the open without anything for protection and all I want to do is throw them in the back of a car and scold them for going out so far while driving away to safety. Seriously, how can those kids who are well aware of the alternate dimension filled with creepy crawlies not travel with Steve’s baseball bat or a flamethrower?

Netflix waited until midnight New Year’s Eve to release the image and I can’t help but speculate. It takes place around the Fourth of July, so clearly, New Year’s doesn’t have anything to do with it, but they waited until the new year, which signifies change, to release the first glimpse of their new season with the tagline, “One summer can change everything.”

The brief amount of spoilers we already have for the show suggest a much darker season. Hawkins will never be the same. Just as the year is changing, so are Hawkins’s residents as well as the main six.

The newly released count-down themed trailer possibly gives away two clues towards the upcoming season. It showcases some eerie images and sounds, including a screaming Mike who can be heard calling Eleven’s name. Among the various images is a computer screen with the phrase, “when blue and yellow meet in the west”,  and a hidden figure launching the program, “SilverCatFeeds.exe.”

This might not mean anything to most people, except for those who read the official companion book to the series, “Stranger Things: Worlds Turned Upside Down” published in October. In the book, fans found morse code messages that, when decoded, spelled out some seemingly random messages. But they appear in the trailer, so they probably mean something.

The “when blue and yellow meet” most likely refers to the clock at the new shopping mall in Hawkins where Steve works. Way back in July, the first trailer for Stranger Things Season 3 was a “commercial” for Hawkins’s hot new attraction: the Starcourt Mall. In the commercial, we see a large clock showing the time 6:30 with one blue hand and one yellow. Maybe something important will happen at this time, who knows.

What do you take away from the latest trailer? What are your thoughts about the poster? Share in the comments below.

Stranger Things Season 3 premieres on Netflix July 4, 2019.