As the New Year rang in for the parts of the US, Netflix dropped a huge teaser for Stranger Things fans... that just happened to include the air date for the hotly-anticipated third season.

Their teaser takes viewers back to New Year's Eve in 1984 - kind of where season two left off - with a Dick Clarke-style midnight ball drop in New York. Sounds nice enough, but things soon get eerie when the broadcast turns upside down (definitely a nod to the youngsters having to face the horrors of the Upside Down once more) then cuts off completely.

When the screen cuts to black, the line 'One summer can change everything' appears in a classic 80s-style green computer text, followed by the confirmation of the date it will finally hit our screens - and that date is 4 July 2019.

Advert

Along with the teaser trailer, Netflix posted a picture to Twitter depicting the show's six youngsters watching fireworks, with only Will Byers and Eleven looking back at the rising claws of the vines from the Upside Down spreading into the real world.

Details about the upcoming season have been kept very hush-hush, except for one whopping clue that David Harbour - who plays Police Chief Jim Hopper - gave audiences back in mid-2018.

Advert

In July he told Deadline: "If you're a real fan of Stranger Things and you really want to know, I would go look at the great films that were released in '85, of which there were many, and just go down that list and think of the possibilities that we could be going with.

"I think it is a specific season to 1985, and so you'll see references to that."

It seemed a pretty cryptic message, but at a glance there were some right corkers, such as The Goonies, The Breakfast Club and Back to the Future, all released in 1985. And that's very obviously not all - other possible touchstones include Rambo: First Blood Part 2, Weird Science and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

Advert

So we could be in for some truly great and - looking at you, Elm Street - utterly terrifying nods to nostalgia in the upcoming season.

Harbour added: "We're experimenting a lot this season, and we're taking risks, and I hope that they pay off but they are risks. We're going into territories we've never been to before, and it's exciting."

Or maybe they're going down a whole Weird Science route then with the 'risks'...

Advert