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Netflix reveals Stranger Things season 3 premiere date

If you stayed up till midnight East Coast time, Netflix delivered some fireworks.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
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Gael Cooper

Happy New Year, Stranger Things fans. Netflix delivered a gift to US viewers at the stroke of midnight, East Coast time, just as 2018 slipped into 2019, revealing the season 3 premiere date for the hit streaming show.

And as is fitting for a show date released on a holiday, the premiere is on another holiday: on July 4, 2019, we're all going back to Hawkins, Indiana.

One tweet simply read JULY 4, and showed an illustration of the cast celebrating under a firework-filled sky. 

Before that tweet, Netflix shared a retro video showing parts of Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve countdown from Dec. 31, 1984. But since Hawkins is no normal town, the clip was occasionally interrupted with weird computer code glitches, and started at one point to turn upside down, as in THE Upside Down. At the end, the premiere date showed up.

Fans who were quick on the PAUSE button noted that certain words in the code were highlighted, and the message read, "When blue and yellow meet in the west."

Fans have until July 4 to figure out what exactly that means. Happy New Fourth of July, everyone, and better save some of those fireworks.

Here's what we know about Stranger Things season 3 so far.

24 'Stranger Things' gifts for obsessed fans

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