Netflix releases ‘Stranger Things’ season three premier date

Just as the ball dropped in the US East Coast, Netflix rang in the New Year by revealing the release date of sci-fi series Stranger Things season three.

In a new teaser, the streaming network revealed that the 1980s-set series will officially return on July 4, 2019.

The minute-long New Year themed teaser features archival footage of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve from 1984. As the ball drops in Times Square and 1985 dawns, things take a turn toward the Upside-Down just as the clock is about to strike midnight.

Despite the new teaser not featuring any new footage from the upcoming season, it does build on a previously released teaser, with Hawkins, Indiana’s Channel 5 news station noting that the Times Square broadcast is “Brought to you by: Starcourt Mall.”

The teaser also introduces a few new clues regarding what season three might entail. The footage of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve is intercut with shots of an old-school green-on-black computer screen, which at one point displays the phrase, “WHEN BLUE AND YELLOW MEET IN THE WEST.” 

The screen also serves up the following “scene,” which appears to show someone accessing an entity called “Lynx Corp.” and running the program “SilverCatFeeds.exe”:

The third season of Stranger Things will be eight episodes long, titled Suzie, Do You Copy?, The Mall Rats, The Case of the Missing Lifeguard, The Sauna Test, The Source, The Birthday, The Bite and The Battle of Starcourt.

Stranger Things stars Winona Ryder, Finn Wolfhard, Millie Bobby Brown, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Noah Schnapp, Natalia Dyer, Charlie Heaton and Joe Keery.

New cast members for the season include Maya Hawke as a mysterious "alternative girl"; Francesca Reale as Heather, a pool lifeguard; Jake Busey as Bruce, a journalist with questionable morals and Cary Elwes as Hawkins' Mayor Kline.