Stranger Things’ Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) has a simple, but pivotal duty in the series. He’s young, dumb, pretty, and, most importantly, guaranteed to get his ass kicked once per season, usually with stunning severity.
In the third season, as Steve and Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) — one of the nerdy teenage friends Steve has accumulated throughout the series — try to concoct a plan to defeat the evil Russians that they are certain are plotting in the basement of the local mall, Steve announces that he will simply sneak up on a Russian guard and “take him out.”
In the first official canonical acknowledgment of Steve’s inevitable seasonal ass-kicking, Dustin sarcastically bites back, “Please, tell me this, and be honest. Have you ever actually…won a fight?” As Dustin rattles off his previous beatings at the hands of Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) and Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery) to prove his point — “You got a fat lip, a crooked nose, swollen eye, a lot of blood…” Dustin lists — Steve remains in his same permanent state of completely unqualified overconfidence.
“It was kind of a bunch of things that all added up,” Steve offers, as a nonsensical explanation for his continued losses. Once again unable to admit he cannot fight, his fate is sealed for another brutal ass-kicking just a few episodes later.
This trope has become so apparent in the last four seasons, in fact, that subsections of the Internet have a small cultural obsession with the matter. There are Reddit threads dedicated to exploring why exactly these repeated beatdowns exist in relation to Steve’s character arc, a select subsection of tags on fanfiction websites dedicated to Steve’s continual beatings, and TikToks eloquently and simply captioned, “Steve getting beat up in every season lol.”
I feel compelled, as a ride-or-die for Steve Harrington since his questionable beginnings as the local asshole in season one, to provide a definitive ranking of Steve’s ass-kickings, quantified by a formula involving karmic alignment, aesthetic appeal, and general vibes.
#1: Jonathan Byer’s Ass-Kicking (Season One, Episode Six)
Steve’s first ass-kicking is a beautiful testament to the occasional value of humbling an asshole the good old-fashioned way, and it is objectively his most deserved. It’s a long time coming, his season-long arc of suspicious teenage boy egotism culminating in an overly dramatic reaction to seeing his girlfriend, Nancy (Natalia Dyer), with another man. He opts to publicly slut-shame Nancy over presumed intentions and bullies Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), the boy she was spending time with, accusing him of failing his now missing brother with the addition of some solid homophobic slurs and harsh shoves for good measure.
In return, Jonathan, in a deeply satisfying turn of events, beats the living shit out of Steve. The pros of this fight are numerous. Most obviously, it’s inherently satisfying seeing a direct repercussion for icky behavior. Even better, it’s nowhere close to a fair fight — while Steve halfheartedly attempts to start what he clearly could not finish, he only gets a few swings in before Jonathan takes him fully down. (A small digression, but I feel obligated to note here that I personally believe, karmically speaking, that Jonathan deserved the few swings that Steve got in for Jonathan’s previous, extremely creepy indiscretion of taking photos of Nancy undressing without her knowledge.)
Jonathan’s beatdown of Steve is satisfying, long enough and severe enough to see that Steve really lost — Jonathan fully gets him on the ground. It’s a direct response to a direct wrongdoing to an undeserving victim (a vulnerable Nancy), and a potent example of talking shit and getting hit, a repercussion Steve clearly has not feared enough in his life thus far.
Most thrillingly, this ass-kicking is an essential part of Steve’s long term growth. To have your ass handed to you by the school weirdo, in front of your girlfriend and friends is, one can only imagine, a deeply humbling experience, and to have Steve in his current, season four form — that is, a charming 1980s himbo with fantasies of children and RV vacations and a delightful protective streak — he simply had to learn this unfortunate lesson.
Bonus points must also be attributed to this fight as being one of Steve’s more aesthetically pleasing beatdowns. Something is always particularly delightful about a bloodshot, damaged VFX eye, and I’m a sucker for a split lip and a cracked nose. All of these are apparent in Steve’s post-beatdown look.
Spiritually, physically, mentally, and emotionally, I find this to be the most essential and most elite Steve Harrington ass-kicking.
#2: Russian Spy Ass-Kicking (Season Three, Episode Six)
After season one, Steve spends his remaining time on Stranger Things growing as a person, which can be attributed to a collection of humbling events: a break-up, multiple traumatic monster-based experiences, and, most important to the purposes of this definitive ranking, his ass being kicked by Jonathan.
By season three, Steve is now a more empathetic, respectful person, who is concerned with the needs of others outside of social posturing (for the most part). But while Steve may be a better person, he is not a smarter one. His specific brand of overconfidence is less overtly and harmfully cocky, but still lacks self-awareness, making him delusionally certain he can sneak up on Russian guards, or win a fight under the right circumstances (for which we have never seen any evidence).
This season three ass-kicking has some heft to it, in fact, I’d say it’s technically twofold. When trapped in the bowels of the Russian headquarters, Steve actually does follow through on his atrocious plan to knock out a Russian soldier by getting a swing in and laying the man out with a very suave twirl of a telephone.
At this point in the series, Steve is now out of high school, working a brainless job at an ice cream store where he is forced to dress in a tacky sailor suit, entirely incapable of dating or getting laid, and essentially only spends social time with younger teenage boys. With his world falling apart around him, it feels right that he at least partially wins a fight, even if he does not avoid the final and ultimate season three ass-kicking.
In all honesty, the follow-up fight with another Russian soldier is less of a lost fistfight and more of a flat-out beating. Steve is captured in their headquarters and is wailed on for information while tied up, so it’s not really a matter of his fighting prowess. What feels so important to me about this beating is that the Stranger Things universe simply refuses to let this man feel confident in his fighting abilities — the more delusionally certain he is that he may be an action-adventure hero when the time comes, the more extremely and comically they knock him out. As a further testament to how far he is from being some stoic face of bravery, as the Russians wail on him, Steve continually gives them all the truthful information possible — his life is simply so lame that they don’t believe he’s telling the truth.
This ass-kicking’s merits are mainly in the fact that he gets a small win (a technical breaking of the fight-loss curse, confirmed by Dustin crowing from across the room: “You did it! You won a fight!”), followed by an astronomically large loss to resettle the karmic score and keep Steve on the long, winding path to finding humility.
I also really love the look of this specific beating — the extremely swollen eye adds a certain something, and I appreciate where in other fights we usually see Steve post-clean up, this beating has a sustained raw, delicious mess to it, and all as he remains trapped in the basement with no chance of tending to his wounds — a constantly bloodied chin and smeared nose remaining for much longer than usual.
#3: Billy’s Ass-Kicking (Season Two, Episode Nine)
The fight between Billy and Steve at the Byers’ house is the least satisfying to me in terms of Steve’s hand-to-hand combat beatings. It’s an obviously unfair fight from the start, and it’s totally unsurprising that he would lose to someone substantially bigger and stronger than him. Billy’s whole character as local dirtbag asshole seems to suggest he’s definitely fought more than Steve has. It doesn’t have quite the same character growth attachment of season one’s smackdown or the heroic adventurism finesse of season three’s fight, instead it just sort of hovers in a lame territory. Billy is also a far worse person, so it’s actually sort of a bummer that Steve doesn’t get more hits in. In an ideal world, I would like for Max (Sadie Sink) to see her abusive shithead brother get taken down in front of her.
Steve gets a couple of swings in here and there, but at the end of the day, Steve and Billy’s fight is another ultimately humiliating loss. It does get a few points in the semi-deserved department if we look from a very big-picture karmic alignment perspective — Steve remains a pretty terrible, over-sensitive boyfriend to Nancy for the first half of this second season. So while this ass-kicking doesn’t come from a satisfyingly direct source, I can see it as a continuing effort in the universe’s attempt to humble Steve.
Something about the fight being broken up by some tranquilizer that they had just laying around in the Byers’ house doesn’t have the same fulfilling flavor of a flailing fight between two adolescents, which really rang true in Jonathan and Steve’s ass-kicking.
The logistics of the aftermath of this fight also rub me the wrong way — while Steve’s stumbly and out of sorts immediately after being knocked out, he moves on instantaneously, pops on those goggles, and heads on into the Upside Down with ease moments later like he’s not probably concussed to all fuck from Billy’s Wrestlemania-esque plate smash over his head. I like some believability in my ass-kickings, I suppose.
Aesthetically, it’s a very swollen and painful looking beatdown — I like the haphazard band-aid and ice pack. Points are also given for the children screaming in support in the background throughout the fight. I, too, would like for all potential future fights I have to be backed by the chorus of some excited 12 year olds.
#4: Demobat Ass-Kicking (Season Four, Episode Six)
I have less to say about this ass-kicking in relation to the others, as it simply does not call to me. While probably the most brutal in terms of lasting damage — Steve estimates he loses about a “pound of flesh” from the freaky little interdimensional “demobats” gnawing at him— season four’s attack feels the least tied to the laws and compelling promise of the previous Official Steve Harrington Ass-Kickings. It lacks many of the qualities of the previous 3 — most importantly, it’s not at the hands of a human, and it’s not connected to the continued tempering of Steve’s ego in one form or another.
In fact, in an attempt to protect his friends, Steve is probably doing the right thing in a reasonable manner for once as he explores one of the open interdimensional gates. Here, Steve’s ass is kicked by a collection of Upside Down “demobats,” who rip out chunks of his torso in an unbridled attack.
There is nothing to be learned from this beating, nor is there any ego to be hurt. I don’t believe Steve thinks he can beat these things, and he hasn’t acted particularly atrociously throughout most of this season. It frankly just lacks pizzazz, especially in the sense that it fails to highlight Steve’s completely shitty fighting skills — who in the world is meant to win against a flock of monstrous demobats? Besides that, no one is even there to see most of this “fight”. If Steve Harrington is not getting his ass handed to him with anyone around to witness and later mock him for it, is it even truly a Steve Harrington ass-kicking? I have some major philosophical concerns about this.
I will attribute some points to this demobat attack though, because I like the part when he spits up all that blood, and his subsequent little denim vest and tummy bandage moment for most of the remainder of the season — this ass-kicking is perhaps, more than anything, a justification for Steve to wear a fun outfit.
Steve’s ass-kickings usually remain visualized on his face and body until each respective season’s end; a busted lip, a leaking and bloodshot eye, a cracked nose, an oozing side wound. The physical wounds signal a literalized bleeding outward that would perhaps signal an internal shift as well — a lesson learned and a boundary developed. While season one’s beatdown (and the social losses that come with it) perhaps signals a potent shift, or an internal lasting effect, the rest of them point to another truth — some of us just aren’t fighters, and some of us, even as we grow, just aren’t going to always be winners, unfair as it may be. As Steve continually becomes a better person with the series’ progression — helpful to the children he hangs out with, a good friend, a man with intentions of starting a family, and hopes of creating a respectful relationship — he actually struggles where he once thrived. Instead of being rewarded for his growth, he is instead relegated to shitty part-time jobs post-high school, a tepid response at best from the girls that used to fall all over him, a group of friends who are hardly cresting the age of 15, and a guaranteed beatdown a year. Maybe some of us are just destined to get our ass handed to us over and over again, but Steve Harrington presents us with a possible positive reframing — we can potentially continue to refuse to let the periodic figurative ass-kicking phase us, and opt instead to dust off with a certain ditzy, delusional charm, go again, and celebrate the rare occasion we get a few swings in ourselves.
