As for what actually happens in season 3... well, it's nearly impossible to tell. To put it literally. Netflix's list of "do not show" spoilers sent alongside advance episodes is as lengthy as it's strategic, forbidding me from as much as hinting at who (or what) the adamant Hawkins, Indiana people are up against this time. The less the viewer of "Stranger Things" knows how to go in, the more thrilling their twists and turns may be, the experience follows the popularity of the first season.

What I can reveal is that by the time the final credits roll on season 3 (plus a post-credits scene you won’t want to miss), it’s made much more of a case for itself than season 2 ever did simply by trying to be something different. The mall especially proves to be a rewarding new location that sets the stage for more inventive battles. Even displacing the action from the spooky grays of late fall to the saturated heat of midsummer shifts the tone and challenges the directors to convey creeping unease through Technicolor sweat. Later scenes set in the manic frenzy of a Fourth of July carnival are so vivid you can smell the popcorn and funnel cake.

The summer 1985 setting also emphasizes time has irrefutably passed, and season 3 does interesting work as it grapples with that fact. For one: Will (Schnapp), traumatized from his time in the Upside Down and always the group’s most tender member, tries to slow his friends down as they obsess over girls. Steve tries to find his place in the world outside a high school hierarchy, challenged all the while by his unimpressed coworker, Robin (Maya Hawke). Max, a well-intentioned character who nonetheless often acts as a cipher for the ones around her, takes on the task of befriending and empowering Eleven, who’s still trying to find an identity all her own. (Does this include a shopping montage to “Material Girl”? You know it!)

Three seasons deep, “Stranger Things” is also more comfortable leaning into character combinations that have proved successful in the past — like the enthusiastic odd couple pairing of Steve and Matarazzo’s Dustin — in order to break up the action into separate stories that eventually converge. Before their inevitable final reunion, the core cast is split into four factions with varying degrees of success. On the frustrating side lie Dyer and Heaton, solid but uninspired in an investigation that takes its sweet time connecting to everyone else, and Ryder and Harbour, who have a prickly chemistry that proves grating when isolated. (It’s unclear why Hopper also tends to cross the line from “charming grump” to “sour jerk” more this season, but he sure does.) Conversely, Sink and Brown tap into a giddy energy that makes a forced friendship feel more elastic and real, while Priah Ferguson, playing Lucas’ wry younger sister Erica, quickly justifies her convoluted entry into the main cast. Keery, who boasts the show’s best comic timing by a mile, gets a worthy scene partner in Hawke; their growing friendship is one of the season’s unequivocal highlights.