How they gonna try and sell us Billy after s2 clearly spelled out he's a racist, physically abusive piece of shit? Like just because he had zero scenes with Lucas this season doesn't mean he's not racist anymore. He gets this big redemption moment at the end and it's like "Aww... all he wanted was his mommy!" I gagged at how hamfisted it was. He would have fucked Mike's mom and homewrecked that whole house if the Mindflayer hadn't done us all a solid. (Yes, we find out that Mike's mom decided against it, but I'm talking from his perspective.)
Additionally, this season felt reeeeaaaally small scale. The US gov't conspiracy stuff in s1/2 made the world feel much larger and more interesting than "there's some dinky Russian base with like a dozen badly-costumed extras all cramped together in one place." Like the early Hopper/Joyce plotline should have been more murky/conspiracy-y than it was.
Speaking of, the Russian plotline made no sense and was hardly setup (a throwaway line that was clearly a misinformed character speaking does not count), and in fact never gets explained itself later. Guess we gotta wait until s4!
All the kids are kinda just little assholes now; when they were younger it was kind of adorable to see them spaz out and say curse words and yell at adults since, in classic 80s movie fashion, they were the ones who knew what was up, etc. But now pretty much all of the boys except Will are various levels of unlikable. I'm actually really sick of Dustin now too, though those Verizon commercials a while back probably didn't help. Hopper also got a little character-assassinated this season, he just comes off like a drunk asshole in the first half and a caveman in the second (where as s1/2 Hopper was more reserved and at least somewhat thought things through better.) In fact I think he drives drunk in the first episode?? And it's never really brought up.
And the ending is the most cliffhanger-y Stranger Things has ever been, when the big appeal of the first season was how self-contained it felt. I still can't believe the Duffer Brothers haven't gotten that yet.
I'm glad this isn't the last season, cause I'd hate for it to end on this note. Seems I'm the only one lukewarm on it though.