Editorials
“Stranger Things” Continues to Brilliantly Develop Some of the Best Characters on Television
Warning: This article contains Season 3 spoilers.
One of the major advantages television shows have over movies is that they’ve got a lot more time to play with, and the best ones relish that free time to develop and evolve their characters and the storylines they’re wrapped up in. In its 8-episode third season, Netflix’s “Stranger Things” continues to prove that on the character front, there’s nothing else like it on TV.
Above all else it’s the characters who call Hawkins home that make its fictional world such a joy to hang out in, and it’s the show’s excellent writing and performances that have allowed each of them to grow far beyond ’80s tropes. Much has been said and written about the entertainment that inspired “Stranger Things” and its Easter egg tributes to the past, but all of that stuff is actually the *least* interesting thing about the show. It’s all just nostalgic set dressing for what’s really important: letting a wonderful set of characters shine.
And the best of them all may very well be Joe Keery’s Steve.
Initially, Steve Harrington was a walking, talking ’80s trope, the personification of the handsome high school jock we’ve hated in so many movies over the years. And if “Stranger Things” was a 90-minute movie, that’s precisely who Steve would’ve been throughout the entire runtime. But across three seasons now, Steve has surprisingly become one of the most likable characters on TV, evolving so far beyond the trope that the Steve of season three is hardly even the same person as the Steve of season one. Mind you, Steve’s redemptive arc began in the latter half of season one, and continued with the fan-favorite “babysitter Steve” storyline in season two, but it’s in season three that Steve reckons with who he once was.
Bloodied, imprisoned, and facing certain death in the Russian lab underneath the Starcourt Mall, Steve shares a beautiful moment with fellow Scoops Ahoy employee Robin in episode 6, which kicks off with Robin sharing a high school memory. Robin tells Steve that she was “obsessed” with him (we’ll get more into that in a minute) in sophomore history class, sitting behind him for a whole year without ever being noticed. She was, after all, a “band dweeb,” while Steve was “the King of Hawkins High” – and in high school, never the twain shall meet.
“Everything that people tell you is important, everything that people say you should care about, it’s all just bullshit,” Steve responds to Robin’s story, acknowledging that the person she’s talking about and the person she’s talking to are not at all the same. “But I guess you gotta mess up to figure things out, right? You know, I wish I’d known you in Click’s class.”
Later, in episode seven, Steve pours his heart out to Robin, confessing that he’s got a crush on her and that he only didn’t talk to her in high school because his friends – the same friends who spray-painted obscene messages about Nancy and Jonathan back in season one – would’ve made fun of him. For Steve, the scene is the completion of a wonderful character arc – “Mr. Cool” is in love with a “nerd” – but for Robin it’s something else entirely. After Steve pours his heart out, Robin gets honest with herself, revealing to Steve that she’s a lesbian. She wasn’t obsessed with Steve because she was into Steve, but because Steve wouldn’t give the girl she had a crush on the time of day. “I wanted her to look at me,” Robin tells Steve.
Rather than going down the expected path and setting up Steve and Robin as the hot new couple in Hawkins, “Stranger Things” instead hits us with a powerful curve ball, one that reminds how good the show’s writers are not just at evolving characters but also creating them. Equally impressive is how well cast and acted the show is, with Maya Hawke shining bright as Robin, another new character who seamlessly fits right in with the rest of the gang that we already love. Going forward, it’s looking like Steve and Robin will be friends, an infinitely more interesting dynamic than if they had become a couple. The Steve of old would surely never believe you if you told him who his two best friends would become.
Season three of “Stranger Things” is loaded with these interesting dynamics, and the show’s writers always seem to know which pair-ups we want to see most. Joyce and Hopper spend most of the season solving the Russian mystery together, flirting with a relationship while they uncover secrets, work together to beat up the corrupt mayor, and even take one of the Russians hostage in the pursuit of information. Joyce continues to be one of the most proactive and intelligent characters on the show, figuring things out long before anyone else catches on, while Hopper’s approach in season 3 is the polar opposite of Joyce’s calm intelligence – moreso than ever before, Hopper is a total brute, rampaging his way through the case. Yes, the show finally made Hopper and Joyce the buddy-cop duo you didn’t know you needed in your life, and it’s a highly entertaining good cop, bad cop dynamic that’s rife with sexual tension.
Some of the most interesting character work going on in season three, however, is Hopper’s internal fight. When we catch up with him in 1985, Hopper is a raw nerve on the verge of a breakdown, dealing with a daughter who’s growing up and a town that has for the *third time* been overtaken by monsters. Given everything he’s been through, up to and including the death of his biological daughter and the dissolution of his marriage, Hopper is an emotional wreck in season 3, and that hurt manifests itself in some pretty unsavory ways. In many ways, the Hopper of season three is a far cry from the Hopper we know and love, and David Harbour wonderfully paints a portrait of a flawed man who’s just barely holding it all together.
And don’t even get me started on those final moments of the season, which deliver “Six Feet Under” levels of emotional devastation. That note. That song. Beautiful storytelling.
But as heartbreaking as it was to see Hopper give his life to help save Hawkins and the people he loves, it was equally heartbreaking to see Dacre Montgomery’s Billy do the same in season three. Billy, a character who wasn’t exactly a pleasant person even before the Mind Flayer got into his head, has a surprisingly redemptive character arc this season, with the writers cleverly using Eleven’s powers as a way of taking us on a little trip down the Hargrove family’s own personal memory lane. Through these stylized flashbacks, enough light is shed on Billy’s childhood to clue us into why he is the way he is, and he gets a nice little final moment where he temporarily holds back the Mind Flayer’s control over him and becomes the hero Hawkins needs… if only for a moment. You know a show is firing on all the best cylinders when you’re wiping tears from your eyes over the death of a character like Billy Hargrove.
Of course, you can’t talk about “Stranger Things” without talking about the kids, who share an overarching storyline in season three. They’re not quite the little kids they were when we first met them, and now that they’re teenagers, there’s a sense of nostalgia that the season has for the show’s own past. In particular, Will can’t come to terms with the fact that his friends no longer want to sit around playing Dungeons & Dragons like they used to – after all, Lucas, Mike and Dustin now have girlfriends to worry about – and it’s devastating to watch along as he desperately tries to recreate the fun of the past. For Will, childhood has been ravaged by the creatures from the Upside Down in a way that his friends never quite experienced, and so it makes perfect sense that he’s the one trying to hang on to every last second. Thankfully, Will finally gets something a bit different to do in season 3, with his connection to the Upside Down serving as something of a Spidey sense-like superpower of sorts. After two seasons of Will being a victim, it’s nice to see Noah Schnapp getting to dig into some new material.
Like many fans, I had wondered if the show would become less charming as the actors got older, but season 3 suggests that “Stranger Things” is only going to get more interesting from here. Growing up presents an entirely new set of struggles that bring fresh subplots and dynamics to season 3 – the show itself, I’d argue, has done a bit of growing up too, getting darker and more dangerous this season – with one of the big highlights being the relationship between Max and Eleven. It’s through a friendship with Max that Eleven starts to really discover who she is and what she wants, developing her own style and figuring out how to deal with boys. It’s been a real treat to watch Millie Bobby Brown evolve the character.
Also great to see? Erica Sinclair, a season 2 scene-stealer, becomes a full-on main character in season 3, and actress Priah Ferguson knocks her material out of the park. Erica, who had been too cool for the “nerds” that her brother hangs out with back in season 2, spends much of the season paired up with Dustin, Steve and Robin, and every scene she’s in is another opportunity for Ferguson to steal the show – which she does, every single time. Erica even gets a little arc of her own that presents itself when Dustin realizes that she’s, well, a total nerd!
The monsters are cool and the retro aesthetics continue to fill me with warm nostalgia, but it’s the characters that make “Stranger Things” an all-time great show. They’re the reason it has evolved from a show that pays tribute to iconic pop culture properties to a pop culture icon in its own right, and season 3 is a new benchmark for character-based storytelling on the small screen. Whether it’s expanding upon existing characters or creating brand new ones, “Stranger Things” makes it all feel so effortless. Here’s hoping other shows start taking some notes.
In this day and age, the word “troll” is often used to describe various online nuisances. Yet as abundant and irksome as the modern troll can be, they aren’t usually as fearsome as their mythological counterparts. I’m not talking about the small and gentler versions that have become more common to see in media. No, there are much bigger and scarier trolls out there—and André Øvredal’s movie Troll Hunter is one of the best places to find them.
It doesn’t take long for Troll Hunter (or Trolljegeren) to dump the Blair Witch Project-esque setup and aim for something a lot fresher. The trajectory of the story is augmented by Otto Jespersen’s character Hans, the titular Troll Hunter. The second he comes barreling out of the deep, dark woods and shouts “troll” at the camera, this movie takes a turn into what feels like uncharted territory. Not only subject-wise, but also conceptually.
For fantastical and made-up subject matter in cinema, found footage is a fast way to add a guise of believability. After all, what we accept to be the most crucial aspect of documentaries—the truth—rubs off on pseudo-documentaries, despite our understanding of the pretense involved. That is what Øvredal delivered with Troll Hunter: a movie so convincing that some viewers wondered if trolls really do exist. So, had this been straightforwardly made, it likely wouldn’t have been as effective. Conventional narratives would be more inclined to treat something like trolls as flat out unreal, and never try to convince the audience to think otherwise.
Hans petrifies the three-headed Tusseladd troll.
The viewers, like the characters trailing Hans, are quickly thrown into the deeper end of that extraordinary story. They have to process all this new information while staying on the go. So, although there is no significant amount of meandering, narratively or physically, there is still a good amount of atmosphere, not to mention tension building. It’s never anything frightful, but then again, Troll Hunter isn’t your standard offering of horror; it’s more on the low end of the dark fantasy spectrum. We aren’t ever spirited away to a faraway world—we stay in rather familiar surroundings, as well as dip into those less so. The outcome is a movie where you’re constantly more in awe than in terror.
As fantasy fiction might do, Troll Hunter prefers not to deal with incredulity. There is no time to waste on doubt, as interviewer Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud), soundperson Johanna (Johanna Mørck), and cameraman Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) all follow Hans around, recording whatever this character is willing to reveal about his bizarre job. Of course, the Troll Hunter himself is not an open book; in that respect, the diegetic documentary fails to fully capture and unpack the more interesting of its two subjects. Yes, all those giant, monstrous trolls are indeed incredible, but understandably, your mind wanders to their pursuer. What kind of person signs up for this gig and then chooses to stick with it for so long?
Reviews have called out Troll Hunter for its lack of character development. In regard to Thomas and his fellow documentarians, that criticism is valid, but bear in mind, they aren’t the focus of the story, either. Meanwhile, Hans is a well-crafted character. At least better than first realized. Before he was introduced, Hans had already grown tired of the troll grind. Fed up with that low compensation for his services, resentful of the bureaucracy, and wanting to expose his employer on a large scale, Hans’ discontent is glaring.
Then there are those finer details about the Troll Hunter, such as that indifference to both the natural splendor of his everyday surroundings and the affections of an obviously smitten colleague, that also suggest some level of despondency. So it is fair to say this movie doesn’t feature any sizable growth for its characters; however, the namesake isn’t underwritten. No doubt, putting a real-life character like Otto Jespersen in that role is partly why Hans is so fascinating—maybe even relatable.
Otto Jespersen as Hans the Troll Hunter.
There is always a small risk whenever using the term “mockumentary” to describe a found-footage movie, as the word could imply humor where there is none. In the case of Troll Hunter, the term’s usage is appropriate. Some folks have claimed the English-dubbed version has the more comedic tone, however, the Norwegian cut isn’t exactly humorless. Apart from the trolls’ absurd appearances, this is a movie where the characters nearly choke on the monsters’ farts, and Christians are like walking targets. Hans’ complete apathy towards everything is another cause of laughter. Overall, the comedy is intentionally dry and inconsistent. Unfunny, though? Absolutely not.
In a movie where endemic creatures are maltreated, as well as disavowed from living freely and peacefully, it’s hard not to notice the ecological message buried beneath the story. In addition to that is the unmistakable political satire. There is this whole business about intrusive and unsightly power lines—like trolls, they’re big blemishes on the land—that leads to what is perhaps the movie’s funniest moment. The scene in question is that one where certain electric lines, the ones secretly being used to keep the trolls at bay, go in a loop and don’t actually send power to any residents. Yet the monitors of said lines don’t find this at all weird. So it stands to reason that Øvredal was having a go at those who accept the government’s doings without question.
Looking past the fact that trolls aren’t actually real, this movie is an enlightening source of information. And not just for international audiences; Norwegians, too, get schooled about their homeland’s own mythology. It’s also evident from everything on screen that Øvredal and his crew were enthusiastic about the topic. The creature designs are the most indicative of that zeal; those imaginative yet myth-accurate manifestations are equally amusing and grotesque. One second you’re laughing at their phallic noses, the next you’re white-knuckling during a hairy sequence. Most surprisingly is how well the trolls’ visual effects hold up after fifteen years. It’s not all spotless, but on the whole, they remain impressive.
Vouching for a mockumentary about trolls isn’t easy, but those who do come around and give it a shot will more than likely be grateful for the recommendation. For Troll Hunter is a real find in that vast and varied genre we call “found footage“.
A bridge troll reaches up for food and finds Hans decked out in armor.
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