Stranger Things keeps hyping Billy up as a villain in season 3

For all that he says he doesn’t want Stranger Things 3 to “be ruined” and for “the whole surprise [to be] gone,” star Dacre Montgomery sounds an awful lot like he wants to give some things away before the new season officially drops on July 4. Speaking to Syfy Wire, Montgomery sprinkled all kinds of hints about what he was up to behind the scenes, and what his character — Max’s older, unstable brother Billy — might get up to..

“Certainly, at least for Billy this season, I had a lot of CGI tracking dots on me,” he said. Now, if he’d said that he’d been in front of a green screen, we wouldn’t bat an eye. But this suggests that he was either doing performance capture or motion capture, for facial expressions or movements in general, not just wearing a small pair of swim trunks and acting as the lifeguard over at the Hawkins community pool.

What could he be doing CGI work for? Going by the trailer, it look like Billy may come into some unpleasant contact with the Upside Down, the shadow dimension on the other side of Hawkins:

If that isn’t enough to make you feel like something’s going to go very wrong with Billy, then take in the fact that he was given Jack Nicholson (in particular, his work in The Shining) as a reference from showrunners the Duffer brothers. Why? “Because he has this unpredictable nature,” Montgomery said. “That was the thing that the Duffers had mentioned to me.”

The Duffers, meanwhile, spoke to Entertainment Weekly about what’s coming for Billy, and while they were much more circumspect, it was still pretty revealing. Said Matt Duffer:

"Billy is now a popular lifeguard at the Hawkins Pool but he will soon find himself pulled into a never-ending nightmare. This season is a major one for Billy — he really takes center stage this year, and we can’t wait for people to see Dacre’s performance."

That “major one” means more than just Billy getting to get a little … stranger (you’ll excuse the pun, we hope). Montgomery mentioned to Syfy Wire that there’s also a very human element to his role this year, as he collaborated with the Duffers on his backstory, including some stuff about his mom.

There are comics and books out there that expand the world of Stranger Things, but thus far they haven’t touched much on Billy’s story aside from Runaway Max. Perhaps Billy is more easily lured into the Upside Down because his mother has ties to the Hawkins Lab? It’s a reach, considering that Will was sucked into the Upside Down by pure accident in season 1, but it’s not impossible.

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“The fans are going to get even more than they bargained for on that front, for this season,” Montgomery said when it came to Billy’s involvement in the Upside Down. Be careful what you say, though, sir. We can imagine and bargain for quite a lot when we put our minds to it.

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