Save this article to read it later.
Find this story in your accountsSaved for Latersection.
Warning: Major spoilers for the end ofStranger Things 3lie ahead.
Hops big speech to his daughter becomes the voiceover framework forStranger Things3s closing montage.
But he knows thats naive.
He knows time cant go backward.
Its just not how life works.
Its moving, always moving, whether you like it or not, Hop says.
The hurt is good, Hop writes.
It means she can feel things.
Its a message about coping with grief and then continuing on.
Its also a messageStranger Thingsseems unlikely to heed.
No, a second officer tells him.
Time has moved forward a bit inStranger Things 3.
The kids are older, theyre struggling with new adolescent tensions, and theyre worrying about their futures.
Within the world of the show, life does go on.
The show is and has always been a nostalgia-fest.
And Hops speech recognizes his own similar longing for the past.
He misses playing board games with El, and making Eggo extravaganzas.
He misses what he remembers as the relative simplicity of her childhood.
Even in season three, it still feels like a monument to a specific lost vision of childhood.
Thats not a criticism, exactly.
There are a few moments whereStranger Things 3seems to recognize that, too.
Mrs. Wheeler is a trapped housewife, who sighs in resignation when regarding her husband.
The shows gay characters are all almost entirely in the closet.
Hes lecturing a child who already lost her parents about the importance of moving on and growing up.
It is the clearest example yet of which perspectives get to be dominant voices on the show.
Even though shes at the center of everything, that position of power rarely goes to El.
The end ofStranger Things 3makes a strong suggestion about whats to come for the plot of this show.
But thematically, the signals are more mixed.
