I haven’t actually watched Stranger Things, only clips of it on Facebook or YouTube. So going into this I have a patchy and disjointed understanding of its characters, its plots, and themes. So corrections to anything that follows are welcome. 

That entire genre of horror and monsters is mostly a big turn off for me, having experienced my kidhood watching the old black & white monster and big bug movies of the 1950s on the TV after school. Now it’s all CGI and gore and I’m not into gore. Plus, the thinking seems to be now that scary movies have to make you feel powerless against evil or they’re just not scary enough. I seriously object to that.

So I saw the online talk about Stranger Things ever since the first episodes appeared when I began to see it as less a sort of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits kind of thing and more like an IT thing I just let it slide. But more recently I started seeing online talk about two of the characters, Mike Wheeler and Will Byers, possibly having a gay romance, and it began to get my attention.

The proponents of this theory had clips of the behavior of these two that were very convincing. But I just expect that anything coming out of Hollywood or big bucks entertainment won’t treat us or our relationships seriously, so I figured at some point someone would put the hammer down on any such speculation like they did for Luca. I was pretty sure it would come to nothing. 

I’ve posted this Vito Russo quote so often everyone reading me is probably very tired of it, but here it is again:

“It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.”

So when the finale came and went and no same sex romance I wrote it off to the usual entertainment establishment homophobia. Oh sure, progress has been made. We’re not pathetic sissies or psycho murderers anymore. We can exist, just not have love lives like real people do.

We can even have coming out moments now on screen. I began seeing clips of Will’s big speech about how afraid he has always been to be out to anyone, and how after he made that speech everyone in the room said how much they still loved him, and a great big group hug ensued.

I was actually very happy to see that. But because of the nature of that short clip based view of the story, I missed its significance. And that significance was, I believe now, a major milestone in how audiences not only see us as people, but in the context of the overall series plot, it also spoke to the deeper meaning of our civil rights struggle.

This story takes place in the 1980s, which while it was better than previous decades, was still a very hostile time. That’s something younger audiences aren’t quite getting when they watch that scene, and start wondering online about why it was made such a big deal in the story. But that’s only part of it.

Not to go into any great detail about the complex plot of this series, but Will was being mind-manipulated by an evil entity (Vecna) that wanted to eradicate all life on Earth. As I understand it (remember I still haven’t watched the entire thing) at the heart of this story is a wormhole (they call it the Upside Down) linking our Earth with a dark desolate mirror Earth full of monsters, trying to get into our Earth. Vecna wants to use these monsters and the wormhole to eradicate all life on Earth (out of, I assume, just pure hate). It’s been using Will’s fear of how his family and friends will react to him if they find out he’s gay, to alienate Will from his friends, and his friends from each other. And especially from Mike. 

Will has a crush on Mike. Mike sees his relationship with Will as they are best friends. He loves Will, but its Philia, not Eros. Mike’s heart belongs to a girl, El. And seeing it is breaking Will’s heart, and causing stress in their friendship that Mike can’t figure out and Will can’t bring himself to be honest about. There’s a scene where Mike and Will are being driven to Nevada to find El, and Will is telling Mike that if El seemed like she was being mean or pushing him away it’s because she knows she’s different…

This is from a transcript of the scene I found online. Not sure if it’s from the script…

[Will] (haltingly) …and when you’re different, sometimes you feel like a mistake. 

The pain is real. His own words cut deeply to the core.

I hate who I am.

On the verge of tears, he turns back to Mike:

[Will] But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all.  Like she’s better for being different. And that gives her the courage to fight on. If she was mean to you, or she seemed like she was pushing you away, it’s because she’s scared of losing you, like you’re scared of losing her. And if she was going to lose you, I think she’d rather just get it over quick. Like ripping off a Band-Aid 

Now it’s Mike who doesn’t get it.

[Will] (CONT’D) (convincingly) So, yeah, El needs you Mike. And she always will.

Mike’s face brightens.

[Mike] Yeah?

[Will] (breathlessly) Yeah.

Will FORCES out a SMILE and Mike returns with a NOD. Thanks, I needed that.

Will turns to the window full of emptiness that goes on forever. HE STIFLES HIS SOBS, finally resigned to knowing that he just ripped off the Band-Aid.

Vecna has been using kids since the start of the series because, as it admits, kids are easier to manipulate. And it is using Will’s fear of being outed to mind-manipulate him into doing things, to cause strife among the friends, and their friends, and keep them all week and easy to manipulate.

The scene where Will comes out to everyone in the room, terrified, but determined to do it and take whatever comes of it, is pure gold on several levels. So I’m told shooting it took two twelve hour days to get it where it had to be emotionally for the actor playing Will Byers, Noah Schnapp, and also the others. I’m quoting the speech here in it’s entirety because it only works as a whole.  

I haven’t told any of you this because I don’t want you to see me differently. But the truth is… I am. I am different.

I just pretended like I wasn’t because I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends and, I am like you. I’m like you in, in almost every way. We like playing D&D late into the night and we like that old person smell in Mike’s basement, and we like biking to Melvald’s for malted milkshakes, and we like getting lost in the woods and getting lost in Family Video and arguing about what to rent and settling on ‘Holy Grail’ for the millionth time.

And we like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and trading comics and NASA and Steve Martin and Lucky Charms and literally all the same things.

I just— I just— I— I don’t like girls. I mean, I do just— Just not like you guys do. And I had this crush on someone even though I know they’re not like me. But then I realised he’s just my Tammy, and by Tammy, I mean it was never about him. It was about me. And I thought I was finally OK with myself.

But then today Vecna showed me what would happen if I did this, if I told you guys the truth. He showed me a future and in this future, some of you are just worried for me, worried that that things will be harder for me, and it just makes me feel like something’s wrong with me.

So I push you away and for the rest of us, we just drift apart more and more and more and more and more until I’m alone and I know none of that has happened and Vecna can’t see into the future but he can see into our minds and he knows things and it just felt so real. It felt so real.

Vecna showed him what would happen if he came out. But it was a lie. Everything Vecna said would happen if he came out, is actually what would have happened if he’d stayed closeted. Will would always feel like something was wrong with him. He would eventually push all his friends away out of fear and they’d all drift away and he would end up alone. And Vecna creates the mutual distrust it needs, and that’s how it wins.

But Will comes out anyway, despite his fears. And when he does, and he is accepted, and loved, at that moment Vecna loses its control over him, and the power it had over all of them.

Do you see what the filmmakers have done here?

This subplot of Will struggling to deal with his sexual orientation in 1980s America is a metaphor of our civil rights struggle. It was never just about how liberating it is for us to be able to, finally, at long last, live honest decent whole lives, but also about liberating society at large, for all of us to be able to live in a world where the all too human monsters among us no longer have power over us. All of us.

These filmmakers/storytellers get it. That is so deeply gratifying.

Which brings me to the other thing I am very gratified to see in this story: How the filmmakers handled with genuine sympathy Will’s crush on Mike.

El is Mike’s true love. The advocates of a Mike and Will romance weren’t giving us the clips that clearly showed that. I don’t think it was meant to deceive, I think they just had a really bad case of confirmation bias. They were only seeing what they wanted to see in the scenes between Mike and Will and brushing off the scenes between Mike and El. If you didn’t see how Mike felt about El before the finale you had to have during it. Mike is best friends with Will, but El is his true love. A romantic relationship between him and Will would have been contrived and disrespectful of the characters.

Recall that scene where Will comes out took two twelve hour days to film. That was not just about getting Will’s emotional state right, but also the characters watching it. During Will’s coming out speech Mike, and this is something the filmmakers have confirmed, realizes for the first time that Will has a crush on him. The actors are good. During that scene you can see dawning awareness on Mike’s face (Mike is played by Finn Wolfhard).

In the next and final episode, as the team prepares for the final battle with Vecna, Mike has a talk with Will…

[Mike] Hey, um… What you said earlier at the Squawk… I’m sorry. I mean, not sorry about what you said. That came out wrong. Or not came out wrong. Jesus Christ.

[Will] [chuckles] It’s okay.

[Mike] No, it’s… it’s not. I should have been there for you, and I wasn’t. And I guess I was just so self-absorbed that I couldn’t see it. I just… I feel like an idiot, and I… [sighs] I’m sorry.

[Will] You don’t have to be sorry. And you are not an idiot. You’re not. It’s just… I didn’t even understand it myself for the longest time. I just… I think it needed to happen the way it happened. I needed to find my own way. But what matters is that you’re still here, and you still think we can be friends.

[Mike] Friends? No, thanks. Best friends. All right, come on. We’ve got a planet to catch. 

Which brings me to this: After the final battle, Mike is bereft over losing El. Sheriff Hopper has a talk with him. It’s worth embracing.

It’s not your fault. What happened is not your fault. El made her choice. Now it’s time for you to make yours. And the way I see it, you’ve got 2 roads ahead of you. You’ve got one road where you keep blaming yourself for what happened. You keep going over it in your head, what you could’ve done differently. You push people away, and you suffer, because that’s what you think you deserve. And then there’s another road, where you find a way to accept what happened. Find a way to accept her choice. Doesn’t mean you gotta like it, doesn’t mean you gotta understand it and never think about it. You just accept it. And you live the best goddamned life you can. I’ve been down that first road before, and I don’t recommend it.

There’s something there about acceptance for the characters, and also the audience. For Mike, for Will, for the viewers who so deeply wanted that Mike and Will romance to happen. For all the loves that were lost. For all the loves that might have been but weren’t. For everyone of us who were still in deeply love and the other just walked away. And maybe, especially, for all of us gay kids who had crushes that would never be on straight boys who just couldn’t go there: It’s not your fault. You can keep going over it in your head and wonder what you could have done differently. You can suffer alone because it’s all you think you deserve. Or you can find a way to accept what happened and have a life, even if it wasn’t the one you wished for. Doesn’t mean you can never think about it. Denial just makes a fixation worse. You just accept what happened and live the best goddamned life you can.