Stranger Things: Every Season 3 Episode Ranked Worst To Best

There are two types of Stranger Things fans: those that watch for the characters, and those that watch for the chills.

If you're in the former group, the teenage angst and group dynamics (changing, fracturing, and coming together again) in the early going of Stranger Things 3 might have appealed to you. For those who wanted action and the scary stuff, the final few episodes were probably more your cup of tea.

The season finale, The Battle of Starcourt, saw a reunited group battling The Mind Flayer, now a massive mountain of meat formed from the body parts of The Flayed. At the same time, Hopper risks death to help close the portal to The Upside Down that the Russians were trying to open. Dustin's long-distance girlfriend turns out to be real, after all, and helps save the day at a crucial moment — not before embarrassing him of course.

The coolest moment might just be Billy's redemption, set up earlier in the season. It's not entirely earned, but it has a certain Boromir feel to it. Joyce shuts down the Russian experiment, seemingly killing Hopper in the process. With The Upside Down cut off from this world, the Mind Flayer's body dies.

We end with the Byers family — Joyce, Will, and Jonathan — moving out of Hawkins a few months later, taking Eleven with them. And, in a tease for season four, we find that Hopper almost certainly survived, and is now captive in some sort of Russian gulag.