‘Stranger Things 3’ Inspired by Comedy Classic ‘Fletch’

The creative minds behind Stranger Things have already promised a darker tone for the show’s Season 3 run on Netflix, but they’re not abandoning the levity and charm that made the series so popular in the first place.

Series star David Harbour revealed to Variety that Stranger Things 3 is being influenced by an ’80s comedy classic that fans probably wouldn’t expect, thanks to showrunners Matt and Ross Duffer.

“The Duffers are so specific each year with the movies,” Harbour said. “And Fletch is one movie we get to play around and have some fun with this season, which you wouldn’t expect from Stranger Things and you wouldn’t expect from the Spielberg universe and you certainly wouldn’t expect from a darker season.“

It sounds like Harbor’s character of Sheriff Hopper could be going undercover to figure out what’s really going with the EPA, who helped coordinate the shady experiments taking place at Hawkins Lab. Harbour said that the new season of Stranger Things is “so much of a departure and so much of a risk.”

But that won’t be his only problem, as he has to deal with his adopted daughter Eleven who is just getting to her teenage years — you know, the “fun” age.

“Their relationship is going to get far more complex, because, you know, things happen to girls and boys when they’re 13 and 14,” Harbour said. “A lot of changes go on in the body and in your social life, and I don’t think he’s going to handle watching her become a woman in front of his eyes very well. That’s a horrifying thing for him — maybe even more so than fighting inter-dimensional monsters.”

But that doesn’t mean that Hopper won’t have his own romance, as the series has been heavily teasing some sort of relationship for the small town sheriff.

“I think it’d be interesting to see if Hopper has it in him to be vulnerable with a woman and to actually be able to show up in that capacity, like what kind of a man he would be in a relationship if that comes to fruition,” Harbour said, dodging the obvious question.

So will Hopper get together with Joyce Byers after all of the setup over the first two seasons? Harbour is hopeful.

“There may be other people in the mix in this situation, but I think they’re built for each other and I would love to see them get together,” the actor revealed. “From the very beginning, I thought that these are two tortured, messed up, beautiful people who are like puzzle pieces that can’t stand each other but actually need each other.”

Stranger Things 3 is rumored to premiere on Netflix sometime in 2019.