1. Hopper giving Mike the crazy eyes was a total mood.
The show pretty much starts off with Mike and El stuck to each others’ mouths, much to Hopper’s chagrin. Forsaking Joyce’s advice to have a heart-to-heart with them however, he instead tells Mike to stay away from his daughter. When Mike calls him a piece of shit however, Hopper goes into total berserker mode. So wrong, but so hilarious.
2. Nancy and Jonathan finally getting revenge on their annoying bosses from The Hawkins Post.
Through a large part of the show, Nancy Wheeler is picked on, humiliated, and even harassed just because she’s a woman working at a predominantly male office. The men don’t take any of her contributions seriously, and instead just make constant fun of her. So when she and Jon have to take down their possessed versions with a fire extinguisher and a pair of scissors respectively, it feels like cosmic justice.
3. Hopper calling Alexei Smirnoff and later giving him the chance to leave was a brilliant sequence.
The fact that Hopper calls Alexei the scientist Smirnoff just because he’s Russian is just such a him thing to do, and I literally had to pause the show to laugh. Later, he throws Alexei out and gives him the car keys, much to the dismay of Joyce and Murray. Everyone, including the viewer, is convinced Alexei will leave, while Hopper claims he’s dealt with people like this his entire life, and that Alexei isn’t going anywhere. Just when you’re ready to throw a glass at the screen however, Alexei stops and comes back. That’s why Hopper’s chief of police, y’all!
4. Joyce generally losing her shit, first at Murray and then at the Secret Service guy on the phone.
Joyce, for all her craziness, always gets shit done. When Murray wastes time running a metal detector over Alexei, she uses the Byers rage – straight up telling him they’ve walked through a forest, blown up a car, and stolen another car to get here, so he better freakin’ help them.
5. Murray Bauman telling Joyce and Hopper they either need to have sex or STFU.
Bickering is a major part of this show – Mike and Lucas bicker over the flavour of New Coke, Dustin and Steve bicker over binoculars, and Joyce and Hopper bicker over pretty much everything. While driving back to Hawkins however, this bickering becomes too much for Murray to handle, and he consequently drops a few truth bombs about how each of them actually feels about each other. This leads to a long and awkward silence.
6. Steve and Robin have a drug trip ending with her admitting she’s a lesbian.
After getting captured by the Russians, Steve and Robin are injected with a truth serum, which honestly just seemed like fast acting MDMA. They go on to have the time of their lives, joking around with their captors, giggling uncontrollably, staring at the lights, and finally spewing their guts out. Steve then admits his feelings for Robin, and while the entire time up till now we just assumed they’d end up together, Robin makes the revelation that she’s actually a lesbian. They go on to become great friends.
7. Eleven straight up throws a car at the evil Russian dudes.
Dustin, Robin and Steve are trapped in Starcourt mall and the gun-toting Russians are closing in. Just when you think they’re goners, El comes through like the champ she is, taking out 3 huge bad guys in one fell swoop by using her powers to send a car flying at them. What a feeling!
8. Hopper gives Mayor Kline a long-awaited beatdown.
Mayor Kline is the kind of guy who just gets your goat – a corrupt, morally bankrupt, coward of a human. After Hopper realises he has something to do with the Russian who beat his ass black and blue however, he loses all fucks to give. He breaks Kline’s nose, almost chops his finger off, and finally gets Kline to admit all the shady dealings he’s been up to. Ah, total catharsis!
9. Billy finally redeems himself by sacrificing his life to save El.
Ever since season 2, Billy was a character you just couldn’t help but hate, despite all the other actual monsters around. This season, he got flayed, which made him honestly a little less of an asshole, but definitely more of a super-villain. When El finally reminds him of his happiest memory with his mom however, he finally fights back against the thing taking over his mind. He beats it and stands up to the Mind Flayer, saving El’s life but sacrificing his own in the process. Thanks Billy.
10. Hopper’s heart-rending ‘letter’ to El that had our tear ducts working overtime.
The heart-to-heart that Hopper was supposed to have with El and Mike actually turned into a letter about how he was feeling distant from Eleven, how he missed making Eggo extravaganzas for her and watching TV together. The fact that El is reading this 3 months after he’s apparently died makes it all the more profound.
11. Dustin and Suzie’s song – Just WTF in the best way possible.
At the climax, just when the characters are desperately trying to figure out a top secret code with seconds to spare, Dustin and Suzie break out into a song from the 1984 fantasy film The Neverending Story. Probably the strangest and most pleasantly unexpected scene from the entire series.
What was your favourite moment from the third season?