The Dead Mall Will Be Resurrected in Stranger Things Season 3

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Abandoned shopping centers, otherwise known as “dead malls,” look a little bit like the Upside Down. The alternate world that serves as the key plot point in Netflix’s Stranger Things is desolate, dark, and eerie. As Eileen Townsend wrote in her piece for Vogue last year, “a dead mall isn’t just a mall that has ceased to function, it is the spiritual inverse of the mall.” Where teenagers once exchanged numbers, ate junk food, and shopped for clothes that were not age-appropriate, silence and emptiness now radiate. There aren’t Demogorgons, falling ashes, or slimy tubes in the many hundreds of malls that currently sit vacant around this country (at least we don’t think so), but the lifelessness of a once-bustling center of commerce does feel similarly ominous. It’s ironic, then, that the first glimpse at season three of Stranger Things would be a view inside a shiny new neon-lit mall in the sleepy town of Hawkins, Indiana. For them, outside of fighting off demons, this opening is a pretty major deal. Instead of a proper trailer, the show creators have given us a perfectly on-point ’80s advertisement for the Starcourt Mall.

There is a Gap, Claire’s, JCPenney, Sam Goody, and a place to buy a hot dog on a stick. Speaking of the food court, this is also where we find our old friend Steve Harrington, as well as a new character named Robin played by Maya Hawke. They work at the ice cream shop called Scoops Ahoy and, yes, Steve is still very cute, even in a lame paper sailor hat. While no real plotline is revealed, the teaser is indeed like taking a trip back to the glory days of mall life, when these shopping halls were very much the center points of suburban communities in America. It is also a reminder that, much as seasons one and two revived our collective fascination with ’80s fashion trends like camp socks and Lee jeans, and caught the attention of designers like Nicolas Ghesquière, the mall throwback may indicate that we’re in for a new wave of Stranger Things–themed fashion nostalgia. Dead malls? As far as this show is concerned, our past shopping life might just be stuck in the Upside Down.