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Stranger Things are Afoot at Starcourt Mall

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a metaphor for a submarine?

The young cast of Stranger Things in Starcourt Mall

In less than two weeks we’re all going to see if our Stranger Things Season 3 theories are correct.

I have had a few thoughts on Hawkins newest business venture, Starcourt Mall, in the last few months. There is every possibility the Starcourt Mall is just an allusion to the breakdown of small town life and values when big business finally makes it way into the neighborhood. I live in a town that has actively tried to keep out or destroy new businesses, to maintain the “small town life” vibe.

My city’s government has very well kept out any new decent businesses, along with most progress for my town. So the show could be making a straight forward remark about how hard it is to make progress in a more rural-ish area of the States, without having people say you’re destroying the moral fiber of the society. Stranger Things is a show that deals with a lot of science fiction though, so lets explore the possibility that Starcourt Mall is something a bit more insidious than what meets the eye.

During the mall commercial they show us Walden Books, with The Hunt for Red October in the window, which isn’t a continuity error really, but it did actually come out the previous year in 1984. I very much doubt that any bookstore would be promoting the book a year after its initial release, especially when Stephen King would have just put out Skeleton Crew—that would have 100% been the window book.

So, what do the Duffer Brothers want us to glean from THfRO? Well it’s been about 15 years since I’ve read it, but I do know it’s about an angry Russian defector coming to America in what is a state of the art submarine, because he feels like its technology is too great and would cause havoc (among other more personal reasons why he defected).

Now, the mall…is said to be an All American subsidiary of Starcourt Industries, an International Enterprise. I wonder which nation it’s from.

Is the mall a way to have Russian spies come to work in America because they’d heard about the technology Hawkins Lab was cooking up? Is the mall itself somehow a camouflaged silent weapon? I obviously don’t know exactly, but I know something is up with this mall.

Kids riding their bikes to Starcourt Mall in Stranger Things season 3

But wait, there’s more! Thanks to the interruption of Dick Clark’s rockin ball drop, we got weird clues like “When blue and yellow meet in the West”—well, well, well. During the Starcourt commercial, they for some honestly unknown reason show us a shot of the clock, which has clearly blue and yellow hands. The silver cat feeds. When the clock strikes 12 in that bitch, something is going to go buck wild. So that just leads me to believe that The Battle of Starcourt, isn’t just going to be a battle that happens to take place there, but Starcourt may be the opposing force.

Then I have to think about THfRO again. If Starcourt is the weapon, then does that mean someone is working there that is a spy who is trying to defect? Possibly the new character Steve is working with at the ice cream shop?

The commercial just seemed so obvious this time when I watched it, with the whole over the top patriotism, and American flags everywhere, and how it seems to want to shove in our faces how wholesome and American it is.

The show starts back up on July 4th, and I am as excited as you are—maybe not excited enough to try an Upside Down burger from Burger King, but we’ll see.

What are some of your theories? Let us know!

Written by Holiday Godfrey

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