5 summer shows you can binge-watch before fall

2. Stranger Things season 3

In case you haven’t heard, Stranger Things was back. The pop culture sensation popped back on Netflix on July 4. The town of Hawkins experiences yet another strange 1980s mystery, and at the center of it stand Eleven and company. The gang comes into summer ready to simply be kids again, but the Mindflayer begins its plot.

Along with the fantastical, supernatural element of their childhoods, the gang is getting older. This, of course, means the boys start noticing, and obsessing over, girls. And the girls start understanding that the boys are a little childish.

One of the main points in this season is the inclusion of the new shopping mall in Hawkins. Equipped with loads of small food court locations, a movie theater, and the latest in fashion, malls were a huge development for pre-teens and teens to delve into a misadventure.

Also entangled in this are the adults and parents of the kids who are trying to maintain this normal-looking life all while keeping a close eye out for the strange happenings of the last few years.

Stranger Things is a phenomenon. Its first season was a gigantic hit and drove the 24-hour news cycle for weeks. It affected pop culture in so many ways with its title card font, the nostalgia references, and the memory of ’80s kids remembering growing up in a different time.

While the fate of future seasons is up in the air at Netflix, you can binge-watch this recent season and go on the journey with the city of Hawkins as they battle a mystical Dungeons & Dragons monster. Season 3 is loaded with more emotionally powerful dialogue as the children are aging into teenagers and begin to express their feelings more openly, not to mention the near-death experiences at least half of them had over the last year. This creates a new dichotomy in which the parents and adults who know of the monsters must abide.