David Harbour feared Stranger Things season 3 had “jumped the shark”

After nearly two years of waiting, the third season of Netflix’s Stranger Things debuts on July 4. For some, it’s been too long, but for star David Harbour (Chief Jim Hopper), it’s all a matter of perspective. “It hasn’t been that long,” he told Mashable. “Think about how long it takes Marvel to make a two-hour movie. It takes them like two to three years to make one movie. And then in a year and a half, we make an eight-hour epic movie? I mean, come on.”

Well, someone sounds a little defensive, but if the third season is as good as it looks, we’ll let it slide.

Personally, I’m pretty excited for Stranger Things 3. Based on the trailers and clips, it should be a good mix of supernatural horror, coming-of-age drama, screwball comedy, and period piece. It looks like they have a nice balance going.

Harbour acknowledges that the third season is different from the past two, and initially, he wasn’t sure if the changes were for the better. “I thought it was very different and very risky,” he said of receiving the season 3 scripts. “It’s hard with a TV show, especially a successful one, because you don’t want to lose the fact that people love what you do, but you also don’t want to have to play the same beats that you have played every season so that people get that same feeling.”

"Hopper is this rugged, masculine individualist in the first season. Now, [in Season 3] he’s softening, to the point that he’s getting bigger, just eating chips and salsa, and dealing with his daughter. He’s in full-on dad mode. But the hard cop side is one thing that I’ve really loved about him, and I was worried, like, ‘Oh no, what are people gonna think?’"

The second season of Stranger Things was very much like the first, so I’m ready for a tone shift, although I can see Harbour’s fears that viewers might be “turned off” by the “comedic” new direction for his character. “All of that is a lot for audiences to accept,. So the whole time we were shooting, I would have these days where I was like, ‘I don’t know, man. We might’ve jumped the shark. I might be Fonzie, jumping over with those water skis right now.'”

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Happily, Harbour eventually came around. “When I saw it all put together and finally saw those same beating hearts of the characters preserved, I thought, ‘Oh, that is so impressive,'” he said.

"A lot of that is due to the Duffers and to the excellent writing and the excellent way they have put these shows together, but they’re also paying attention to [the actors]. They’re wanting to go on this journey with us and what we find interesting and where we’re growing as human beings too. You have to stretch and you have to grow, otherwise you get bored and just start playing a cliché."

You can see Harbour work through these anxieties onscreen in just a couple days. Meanwhile, Mille Bobby Brown (Eleven) has a simpler teaser for Stranger Things 3:

“Get a box of tissues.” I’ll see if I have any left over from the final season of Game of Thrones.

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