SPOILER ALERT: Nothin’ but SPOILERS below. If you haven’t watched all of ‘Stranger Things 3’ on Netflix, turn back now or proceed with caution.
‘Stranger Things’ is always full of twists and turns and new revelations that change everything. But these revelations don’t always involve interdimensional monsters or secret government experiments. Sometimes, they’re just quiet moments of vulnerability that open a character up beyond what has already been shown.
Perhaps the biggest personal reveal this season belonged to new character Robin, Steve‘s coworker at the completely unsupervised ice cream shop Scoops Ahoy, located at Hawkins’ new Starcourt Mall. As it turns out, Robin, played by Maya Hawke (the daughter of Uma Thurman and Ethan Hawke), is an old schoolmate of Steve’s, who even sat behind him in Miss Click’s first period history class, although he barely remembers her, seeing as how he was busy being the most popular boy in their grade.
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With some prodding by Dustin, Steve (Joe Keery) realizes that he should stop chasing waterfalls (oops! Wrong decade) and appreciate this great girl that he enjoys spending time with. Under the influence of truth serum injected by Russian agents, Steve confesses his budding feelings for Robin. But having been injected with the same drugs, Robin makes her own admission… she likes girls.
This scene takes place on the remarkably pristine floor of the Starcourt Mall public restroom. And as series co-creator Matt Duffer reveals, was influenced by similar confessional scenes in movies like ‘The Breakfast Club’.
Netflix
“It’s sort of that John Hughes thing of putting two teen characters together in close quarters… She comes in with these expectations of who Steve Harrington is; he comes in with these expectations of who Robin is. Then over the course of their adventure together, they learn that the impression they had of each other was completely wrong.”
Thurman herself revealed:
“She gets less sarcastic and more vulnerable and more herself, until finally, in the end, she has no choice but to be her complete self. I think that to have that scene [set] in the ’80s, and to have that scene on TV in general, I feel really honored to have got to be a part it, and I’m really grateful that the Duffer Brothers wrote it.”
Surprisingly, her coming out wasn’t carved in stone from the beginning.
Netflix
“We were talking about it throughout [shooting]. It wasn’t definitive. It was a kind of discussion between myself and the writers’ room and the Duffer Brothers and [executive producer] Shawn [Levy]. We were trying to find what was right for Robin and right for the journey and right for the show. But that ended up being my favorite scene to film.”
Duffer added:
“Maya and Joe spent a long time rehearsing it, not with us. They just went in and worked on it, like workshopped the scene on their own, and then they came and delivered. It was just one of those things that resonated with everybody on the crew. Some scenes you go, ‘I hope that works in the edit room.’ You get it to work. That scene worked on the day, in the edit room — it’s never not worked.”
Matt’s brother Ross added that they were so impressed that they didn’t cut a single line of dialogue from that scene.
Much like Max (Sadie Sink), last season’s newcomer, Robin seems to have fit right in and proved invaluable to Steve and Dustin’s mission to decipher a mysterious Russian broadcast.
In addition to Robin’s confession, thanks to Starcourt Mall, viewers discover that as tiny as Hawkins might be, it definitely has an LGBT community, despite this being the much more restrictive ’80s.
What did you think of Robin as the newest addition to this franchise?
Jax's earliest memory is of watching 'Batman,' followed shortly by a memory of playing Batman & Robin with a friend, which entailed running outside in just their underwear and towels as capes. When adults told them they couldn't run around outside in their underwear, both boys promptly whipped theirs off and ran around in just capes.
