The third season of Stranger Things, which has made major pop culture waves since its first installment premiered in 2016, aired on Netflix on Thursday, July 4. Although fans will undoubtedly enjoy piecing together the new storyline of season three, they will also smile to see the reunion between two of the shows most loved characters: Dustin (Gatan Matarazzo) and Steve (Joe Keery).
Although the two started off their Stranger Things journey on seemingly distinct paths, something of a bond developed during the second season. This brought Matarazzo to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the obvious on-screen chemistry with his co-star, Keery. The 16-year-old actor was first to admit that their bond “came out of the blue.”
Even if the bond was unexpected, it managed to solve multiple problems for the show’s writers, who were struggling to hone the direction of either character as Matarazzo later explained. “No one ever expected it. Neither did me and Joe, at all. In the middle of season two, as they were writing, they realized that me and Steve had nowhere to go. It was pretty much our characters were at a dead end in the plot, and there was really only one path for each of them to go on to continue their story.”
In other words, the timing for their sudden friendship was perfect.
“And then they realized that if we brought them together, it would create another storyline and it would give purpose to get them to a new place and time. They were actually dealing with similar things at that point in the story, so it was actually really cool. So those characters had something in common that they could bond over,” Matarazzo said.
The young actor finished with this: “It wasn’t anything like it was a new duo. It just happened because it needed to happen. And then people just seemed to really like it.”
Basically, the Dustin-Steve bond worked for the story. As it would have it, that bond worked for fans too.
Season three of Stranger Things is available for streaming on Netflix.