Like we all hoped, Stranger Things season two turned out to be a worthy follow-up to the Netflix series’ addictive debut season. Now, though, we’re left with plenty of questions, mysteries, and theories to chew on as we wait for season 3. But for everything we don’t know about what the next season of Stranger Things will bring us, there are more than enough things we do know to keep those fan theories coming. Here’s everything we know about Stranger Things season 3 so far.

1. IT WILL PREMIERE ON INDEPENDENCE DAY.

On December 31, 2018, Netflix decided to welcome in the new year by sharing that Stranger Things will return on July 4, 2019. The announcement—which featured footage from Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 1985—could not have been more on-brand.

2. THERE WILL BE ANOTHER TIME JUMP.

The third season of Stranger Things won’t pick up right where the second one left off. Like the show experienced between the first two seasons, there will be a time jump between seasons two and three as well. The reason is simple: the child actors are all growing up. As the Duffer Brothers told The Hollywood Reporter in 2017:

“Our kids are aging. We can only write and produce the show so fast. They’re going to be almost a year older by the time we start shooting season three. It provides certain challenges. You can’t start right after season two ended. It forces you to do a time jump. But what I like is that it makes you evolve the show. It forces the show to evolve and change, because the kids are changing.”

3. THERE WILL BE A TOTAL OF EIGHT EPISODES.

In January 2018, executive producer Shawn Levy told Glamour that season 3 would likely include eight or nine episodes, explaining that “The number of episodes will be dictated by the amount of story that excites us.” Just a few months later, Levy told Collider that they had settled on eight episodes. And in December, Netflix released the episode titles.

4. IT WILL BE SMALLER IN SCALE.

If the series’s second season was about expanding the Stranger Thingsmythology, the third season won’t go bigger just for the sake of it, with the brothers even going so far as to say that it will be a more intimate story.

“It’s not necessarily going to be bigger in scale,” Matt Duffer told IndieWire. “What I am really excited about is giving these characters an interesting journey to go on.”

5. A LOT OF THE ACTION WILL GO DOWN AT THE LOCAL MALL.

In July 2018, Netflix dropped a fun teaser for the third season (yes, that is Steve Harrington) that promoted Hawkins’s new Starcourt mall. (Hey, it’s the ’80s!) Fans loved it—but also wondered whether it would be a place that we’ll see in season 3. Indeed we will, and it will bring a different sort of look and feel to the show. “Aesthetically it’s going to feel very different,” Ross Duffer said. “Everyone is going to this new mall, seeing movies, and, of course, the Hawkins pool is open for business. I think there’ll be a sense of fun and joy.”

6. THE MIND FLAYER WILL BE BACK.

The second season ended on a bit of a foreboding note when it was revealed that the Mind Flayer was still in the Upside Down and was seen looming over the Hawkins school as the winter dance was going on. Though we know there will be a time jump at the start of next season, it’s clear that the monster will still have a big presence on the show.

Executive producer Dan Cohen told TV Guide: “There were other ways we could have ended beyond that, but I think that was a very strong, lyrical ending, and it really lets us decide to focus where we ultimately are going to want to go as we dive into Season 3.”

What does the Mind Flayer’s presence mean for the new crop of episodes? Well, there will be plenty of fan theories to ponder between now and the season 3 premiere.

7. IT WILL BE THE “GROSSEST” AND MOST “BRUTAL” SEASON YET.

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While the cast and creators have remained tight-lipped about any key season 3 details, they have promised some scares. “While it’s our most fun season, it also turns out to be our grossest season,” Ross said. “We’re inspired by John Carpenter’s The Thing. We’re inspired by [David] Cronenberg. We have a little bit of a George Romero vibe in there as well. There are horror movies and horror masters that we haven’t really paid tribute to as much in previous seasons that we are definitely going to get into this season.”

The cast has confirmed this sentiment. Natalia Dyer, who plays Nancy Wheeler, dubbed season 3 “bigger, darker, [and] scarier” than the first two. Noah Schnapp, who plays Will Byers, told MTV News the same, revealing that the “threat,” whatever it may be, is much more intense this time around. “Oh, yeah, the threat is … it’s brutal. It gets bad. It’s very big,” the 14-year-old actor said. “I feel like every season it kinda gets more—like it’s taking over Hawkins.”

8. PLENTY OF LEFTOVER SEASON 2 STORYLINES WILL BE FEATURED.

The Duffer Brothers had a lot of material for Stranger Things‘s second season—probably a bit too much. Speaking with Vulture, Matt Duffer detailed a few details and plot points that had to be pushed to season three:

“Billy was supposed to have a bigger role. We ended up having so many characters it ended up, in a way, more teed up for season three than anything. There was a whole teen supernatural story line that just got booted because it was just too cluttered, you know? A lot of that’s just getting kicked into season three.”

9. THERE WILL BE MORE ERICA.

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Stranger Things already had a roster of fan-favorite characters heading into season two, but newcomer Erica, Lucas’s little sister, may have overshadowed them all. Played by Priah Ferguson, Erica is equal parts expressive, snarky, and charismatic. And the Duffer Brothers couldn’t agree more, saying that there will be much more Erica next season.

“There will definitely be more Erica in Season 3,” Ross Duffer told Yahoo!. “That is the fun thing about the show—you discover stuff as you’re filming. We were able to integrate more of her in, but not as much you want because the story [was] already going. ‘We got to use more Erica’—that was one of the first things we said in the writers’ room.”

“I thought she’s very GIF-able, if that’s a word,” Matt Duffer added. “She was great.”

10. EXPECT KALI TO RETURN.

The season two episode “The Lost Sister” was a bit of an outlier for the series. It’s a standalone episode that focuses solely on the character Eleven, leaving the central plot and main cast of Hawkins behind. As well-received as Stranger Things season two was, this episode was a near-unanimous miss among fans and critics.

The episode did, however, introduce us to the character of Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), who has the ability to manipulate people’s minds with illusions she creates. Despite the reaction, the Duffers felt the episode was vital to Eleven’s development, and that Kali won’t be forgotten moving forward.

“It feels weird to me that we wouldn’t solve [Kali’s] storyline. I would say chances are very high she comes back,” Matt Duffer said at the Vulture Festival.

11. OTHER “NUMBERS” MIGHT SHOW UP.

JACKSON LEE DAVIS, NETFLIX

We’re already well acquainted with Eleven, and season two introduced us to Eight (a.k.a. Kali), and Levy heavily hinted to E! that there are probably more Hawkins Laboratory experiments on the horizon.

“I think we’ve clearly implied there are other numbers, and I can’t imagine that the world will only ever know Eleven and Eight,” Levy said.

12. THERE MIGHT NOT BE MANY SEASONS LEFT.

Don’t be in too much of a rush to find out everything about the next season of Stranger Things; there might not be many more left. The Duffer Brothers have said in the past that the plan is to do four seasons and end it. However, Levy gave fans a glimmer of hope that things may go on a little while longer—just by a bit, though.

“Hearts were heard breaking in Netflix headquarters when the Brothers made four seasons sound like an official end, and I was suddenly getting phone calls from our actors’ agents,” Levy told Entertainment Weekly. “The truth is we’re definitely going four seasons and there’s very much the possibility of a fifth. Beyond that, it becomes I think very unlikely.”

13. CARY ELWES AND JAKE BUSEY HAVE JOINED THE CAST.

The cast of Stranger Things is growing for season three, and two of the most high-profile additions announced so far are Cary Elwes and Jake Busey. Elwes—of The Princess Bride and Robin Hood: Men in Tights fame—will be playing Mayor Kline, who is described as “Your classic ’80s politician—more concerned with his own image than with the people of the small town he governs.” All we know about Busey’s character is that he’ll be named Bruce and is described as “a journalist for the The Hawkins Post, with questionable morals and a sick sense of humor.”

In March, it was also announced that Maya Hawke, daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke, landed a role in the upcoming season. According to Variety, she’ll play an “‘alternative girl’ bored with her mundane day job. She seeks excitement in her life and gets more than she bargained for when she uncovers a dark secret in Hawkins, Ind.”