Hi jcsbanks,
In additional to what Sprite says, note that after the v3.3 final release we will continue to backport bug fixes to this branch and then later tag v3.3.1, v3.3.2, etc after we finish QA testing based on a particular commit from the branch.
So you may want to keep an eye out for the v3.3 final release and then stop pulling updates on the release branch, in order to keep using a stable release rather than a moving target of additional fixes.
Some additional discussion can be found here:
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp ... start-with
(Specifically the choices are "using a stable version" vs "using a release branch", with pros and cons for both.)