Stranger Things stars tease Max and Eleven’s friendship in season 3

Stranger Things has always been a boy-heavy show, with the central foursome of Mike, Will, Dustin and Lucas anchoring both seasons. Each year, a girl joins the group — Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in the first season and Max (Sadie Sink) in the second. But the two have never had a chance to spend much time together; in fact, the second season pitted Eleven against Max, which understandable for the characters still felt a little tired from a storytelling perspective.

That all changes in season 3, when the two become friends. “We’re two powerful girls in real life,” Brown told Nerdist. “And we’re also two powerful girls in the show. So it’s putting two powerful female forces together. And girls that are tomboys like Max, and who are confused like Eleven, can see them together. It’s a really interesting dynamic.”

Sink shared Brown’s excitement, and gave us a little tease of how this odd couple would work. “Max kind of takes Eleven under her wing and introduces her to the real world – shopping, having fun.”

So it sounds like Eleven gets over her grudge against Max from season 2, where she assumed (wrongly) that Max was taking up the role she used to have in Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) life. And it’s not just about Mike; according to Brown, there’s some all-purpose envy in there, too: “Well, Eleven hasn’t met many girls her own age before, so when she saw Max she immediately saw her as a threat.”

But once Eleven gets over that initial shock, envy may turn to admiration. “Max is like, the true definition of a girl, you know, she has long hair, she knows what her style is,” Brown said. “She knows who she is. And Eleven is like, ‘I want to be you.’ It’s interesting.”

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It’s definitely good to hear that Max and Eleven will have lives apart from the dudes in the group come season 3. However, both of them are currently in relationships — Eleven with Mike and Max with Lucas. These are middle-school aged kids we’re talking about, so romance is turbulent at the best of times. Or, as Brown puts it, “We’re both girlfriends, which sucks.”

"There’s good and bad stuff. It’s just kind of the fundamentals of a relationship and you have to learn to have that. Also, Eleven doesn’t know how to have a relationship, whether it’s with her father, her papa, with a boy, with herself – she doesn’t really know how to have a good relationship with herself, let alone a boy so it’s very new for her. It’s her first for everything this summer, which is really cool."

Stranger Things season 3 drops on July 4. Prepare for fireworks.

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