It must be strange to live in a Midwest town that is home to nefarious conspiracies, secret experiments and a portal to an alternate dimension populated by grotesque monsters. But coming of age is still stranger.

After an absence of almost two years, “Stranger Things” returns on July 4 for its third season on Netflix, and a lot has changed in that time. It’s still the 1980s, the era of New Coke, Jazzercise and George A. Romero’s “Day of the Dead.” But as we catch up with the kids we’ve followed on their adventures — Will (Noah Schnapp), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Max (Sadie Sink), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and the psychic Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) — we discover they’re not kids any longer.

Season 3 finds them in the summer between their middle school and high school years, and they are unmistakably teenagers now, teeming with all the passions and messy feelings that come with that phase of life . Their growing up is reflected in the ’80s-era touchstones that this series is famous for cribbing from, as the innocence of “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial” and “The Goonies” gives way to reference points intended for more grown-up audiences, like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.” (Fittingly, portions of this season take place in Hawkins ’s new shopping mall.)

While the “Stranger Things” friends once again contend with hideous beasts of the human and nonhuman varieties, they are also finding their first loves, suffering their first breakups and discovering it’s not as easy as it used to be to keep their gang together.