It's odd to me that people take Will's words at rink-o-mania as the ultimate truth, and not just as this miscommunication issue that they show us it is.
Will tell us "You called maybe a couple of time" leading us to believe that Mike didn't reach out at all to Will. Especially considering that Mike doesn't deny it. But he does throw back that Will could have tried to keep the contact going too. Yet people keep in mind that Mike didn't call nor write.
A few episodes later, we're being corrected on that assumption by Dustin, who states that Mike is actually trying to call the Byers, but just can't go through.
This frame insists that it's something that occured multiple times, through the months.
People also rightfully points out Will's letter to Mike a lot ("I miss clouds, I miss you") from the box set.
In it, Will regrets not having a way to remember their (dnd) adventures together. And we aren't made aware of any answer from Mike. But we are given a letter from Dustin to Will.
"Mike suggested we should put together a few things so you have something to look back on".
Mike may or may not have answered that letter directly, but we know he thought about it enough to act up on Will's regret, and bring in everybody, including Joyce and Jonathan. Maybe he didn't find it in him to answer directly, maybe he wanted to keep the secret of it until they had everything – I don't know, but clearly he did care about "whatever (he) had to say".
During rink-o-mania, Mike insists that Will's behavior sabotaged the whole day, because he was moping and not saying anything.
In season 2, Lucas note that Will is "always silent", and Mike insists that it's different, that Will's silence isn't the same – and he's right. Same goes on for this day too, Mike takes notice, he cares about Will silence, that others would have just noted to be his usual behavior. El is very busy dealing with bullies, but she also doesn't seem to notice Will's behavior as unusual.
Mike very much care about anything that Will has to say, or to not-say. And Will not being ok, is affecting Mike's mood too. And yes Mike isn't a good boyfriend to El, but maybe, he's also too absorbed by Will's mood, and his attempt at understanding it, to realize El needs help.
And mind you, Will knows she does because he has witnessed the harassment she goes through. But Mike has only been told lies, that he can't pierce through, and has to go ln through context clues. Nobody told him otherwise.
During the fight, Will finally lays out what has been going on, why he's being so quiet, and despite Mike not saying anything, immediately after, Mike's behavior change. He stops being awkward and distant and goes right back to apologizing, and speaking to Will with the utmost care and sincerity. Assuring Will that ultimately, they are a duo, and that nothing has been alright since he left.
May be reading too much into it, but it does feel like, after trying to reach Will, to understand where they are in their friendship, if Will still cares for him, still trusts him, he doesn't know how to act with Will at the airport. And their fight finally broke the dam of all the things unsaid between them, all the things he couldn't read just from Will's eyes. From the moment Will shows he still cares, Mike immediately reciprocates.
And this can also be tied to the painting. El tells Mike (in what's clearly a past / old letter thar he's reading again – why this one in particular?) that Will is painting, spending a lot of time on it even, and she believes it's for somebody, maybe a girl.
Something that, obviously, Will hasn't told him about, a secret he isn't privy of. Perhaps and most likely, a first in their relation.
Mike immediately questions Will about the painting at the airport, despite it being so clearly a piece of paper (a painting), and that he knows about it. But Will is feeling rejected by the hug and brushes it off. What is Mike supposed to do? Demand answers ? Call him out about it and mention what El told him privately? For what, with what justification when as far as he knows, it's not his business?
"Cool" and he doesn't look chill about it, even from afar.
I'm wondering, if after countless, fruitless attempts at calling your bestfriend, who didn't seem to call himself, you also learned that he was keeping a secret from you, for the first time : how would you react?
Would you feel confident facing them again? Not even doubt your friendship even a single second ? Not be somehow awkward? Maybe even hesitant to hug them?
And that suddenly, for the first time in your entire life, you can't tell what's going on with them. Can't decipher their gazes and their silence, except that they're unhappy, mopey, and they aren't confiding in you. Would it not drive you crazy? Would you not try to hide how hurt you are, even a little bit? To keep pride maybe, or spare your feelings?
Plus, the entirety of Will and Mike relation, orbits around two things, friends don't lie, and 'I didn't say it – you didn't have to'. Don't lie to me, and I will read your silence. I will decode what you can't say.
Which is also the root of every single problem that arises between them in s4 and s5.
Because they're so far from each other, Mike can't decrypt Will, and he misses on major elements of that narrative. Despite how much he tries to put the pieces together, there's only so much he can infere from it all. The fight finally let him understand what's going on, and so Mike adjusts his behavior.
But then Will does the unthinkable : he lies to Mike. And Mike would never doubt Will, because it's the rule, that Will and Mike don't lie to each other.
And he can doubt Eleven's words, because El lied to Mike (straight to his face), and Mike lied to El (s3), but never Will, Will wouldn't lie to Mike. What Will says, has to be the truth.
So when Will says El commissioned the painting? She lied in her letters about her friends, maybe she wanted to hint at the painting secretly, and lied about it too. Will is telling the truth.
Will tells Mike that whoever he was in love with, is just his Tammy and he has moved on? Will never lies – not to Mike, Will is telling the truth.
And even if he isn't – he clearly doesn't wish for Mike to reach out. But he does wish for their friendship, he said so, about how much it meant to him, to not lose his friends, how much their bond, not as friends but as best friends, mean to him. So Mike will reiterate they are best friends, that they won't ever lose that, no matter what. Mike follows exactly what Will says, always.
Also, anecdote, we're also told by Dustin in Dustin's Experiment, that Mike is close to greedy when it comes speaking to Will through the phone. Trying to keep the conversation going, and refusing to give the phone to Dustin. Noting that where Mike always has something to say to Will, he doesn't seem to find quite as many things to say, when it's to El.
I needed to get it out of my system, so here it is! I hope you like it… I don’t see them following the show’s plot to a T, just some overlaps and maybe one free fall off a cliff together.
Byler but they are amature paranormal investigators
Dustin and El are part of their team, too. Dustin is the tech guy, and he actually tries to debunk stuff while the others jump to conclusions. Will and El are both intuned to the paranormal, like mediums, but they don't really have a lot of control over it. Mike does the research and finds places for them to investigate, and writes up the description they read about the location's history. Lucas and Max are common guests on the channel and fan favourites, but they never take it seriously, which pisses Mike off.
Mike's coming out was always going to be more difficult than Will's
The Reagan/Bush administration, who Ted Wheeler voted for, didn't just ignore and brush off the AIDS epidemic in the 1980' which killed a significant portion of gay men, they actively propagandized it to feed into extreme right Christian narratives referred to at the time as the Moral Majority. This was the idea that most Americans were "Good Christians" and others (queer people and nonconformists) were deviants. Ronald and Nancy Reagen were the face of this movement. It was very common for the news, media, and information put out to small town America (ie; Hawkins) to refer to AIDS as things like the Gay Plague, Gay Cancer, Wrath from God, and Gods Punishment for Homosexuality among other things.
This would be the news that Ted Wheeler is always so fond of watching on tv and reading about in his newspaper. News that Mike would have been overhearing constantly. While Mike never shied away from calling Ted out on his more ridiculous comments, there's no telling how much of this stuff he really did end up internalizing and I'm guessing it was quite a bit.
And that's just touching on the AIDS epidemic specifically, not the rampant homophobia and hate crimes that happened on a regular basis in the 80's. "You see what happens Michael?" "My dad says he was probably killed by some other queer."
And if you're thinking that's a lot to glean from a few shots of the Wheeler's home, it's not. Visual storytelling is the throughline of Stranger Things allowing us to piece together dozens of narratives and themes. Someone from props had to re-create this 40-year-old sign and then ensure its visibility in multiple shots. The intention is clear. It tells its own story. Just like overlapping plotlines and double meanings.
Jason: "I came here today to humbly ask for your help, to join me in this fight. Let us cast out this evil and save Hawkins, together!"
This is the same bible verse that Jason refers to when he asks the town of Hawkins to help him track down Hellfire Club.
Both Mike & Will focus on it on their way back into Hawkins
Will had Joyce, Jonathan, Robin, and he found out by extension, even Steve's support. That's how he eventually found himself in a room full of people he trusted enough to open up to. I maintain that Mike had none of that. Sure, as the audience with our omniscient abilities it might feel easy to say we know Nancy would accept him, or even Karen. But Mike really has no reason to believe that. Again, audience omniscience is a privilege because it's easy to get frustrated (if he would just talk to his best friend everything would be ok) but Mike was constantly encouraged by Will to keep his relationship with El intact. Mike received a letter from El telling him Will like's some girl so much that he's even been acting strange. Mike was isolated and alone in this. And thinking that Will couldn't possibly feel the same way based on everything he knows, what incentive did Mike have to make his life a lot more difficult than it already was?
After he and Nancy promise to tell each other everything going forward in S1, we never see them confide in each other again. He and Nancy might not be hiding the same things, but repression isn't exclusive to queerness, and they were both raised to bury things. In this particular thing, Mike had no one.
As with all things in this show, his reaction at the Squawk may have seemed anti-climactic at the time, but it was actually really telling. If you look a little closer, he's grappling with information overload here while Will is talking. It's why he's the last to stand up and join in the hug. In a matter of minutes, he is cycling through learning his best friend who he's had complicated feelings about for years is gay, used to have a 'crush' on him, is over it now, and has learned that it was never about him (Mike).
Too much, too fast, and he couldn't process it all at once.
Mike's final attempt to bridge this gap is when he nervously decides to stutter his way through bringing it up on the radio tower just to have Will reiterate that "I needed it to happen the way it happened. I needed to find my own way" (apparently without Mike who's love language is essentially being needed). And then will goes on to say he hopes they can still be friends. I think Mike's perspective on Will this season is that he needs him more and Will needs him less. At this point, based on all of the information he's been given, he has no reason to say anything at all.
And while we're on the topic of how conflicted and lonely Mike's truly been, this boy did not jump off this cliff to save his friends baby teeth. He used his friends baby teeth as an excuse to jump off this cliff. You can be surrounded by people and still feel completely alone if they don't know the real you. This is why people die in the closet. He saw his best friends dead body pulled from the quarry and those complicated feelings I mentioned earlier already existed. His friend who at this point, Mike's been told most likely did die because he was perceived as gay and was the victim of a hate crime. There's not a lot of subtext needed here. He was not in his right mind after losing Will.
Anyways, thanks for coming to my depressing history lesson and Justice for Gay Mike Wheeler talk.
The tunnels were a trap. Mike was right and lots of people died in them that day.
This trap door leads to those same tunnels.
Going into these tunnels again, leads to another trap (a never-ending story if you will)
The Mac-Z fight was orchestrated. Vecna needed Will to access his powers so he could use him as a conduit, which was always his plan. All he had to do was put the chess pieces in the right place on the board and wait for Will’s move.
Will's experience being the first "weak" child is something Vecna likes to remind him of constantly. He preys on Will's empathy and humanity and particularly how helpless he felt as a kid. Now Will feels personal responsibility towards the next group of kids. His reaction to being told he needs to play it safe in finding Holly is very telling:
"Holly will die if we don't do something!" "How does that get us closer to Holly?! She's in there, Mom, all alone, I know what that's like. I won't just leave her there!"
Vecna's greatest skill is finding people's vulnerabilities.
“Can you see them, William? Can you see the children?”
Will feels like he can't contribute any kind of meaningful protection to his friends and loved one and he's the one who always needs protecting. By reminding him he is "weak" and a "burden" who doesn't belong with the people he loves (some minds simply do not belong in this world), Vecna just pressed on his worst wound and it worked…
And once he accessed those powers and continued to enter the hive mind, they grew. But as we saw in Shock Jock, Will never really got a good grasp on them for long before he was laid out on the couch with his REM going crazy. And we learned this season what his REM in a trance means. He’s building something. First it was the tunnels. But now, it's something bigger than he’s ever built.
He explained it to us himself
Will is not the creator of the illusions, that’s Vecna. Just like he’s not the director of the play, that's Henry.
Without realizing it, Will has become the architect of Vecna's illusion. He is the set designer for a play the size of Hawkins.
But Mike - Mike is the storyteller. He is writing the script.
And since Will is trapped building this as long as the there is a script and a director, it seems pretty obvious that there's only one way to break the cycle.
The storyteller needs to tell THE story. The one he can never tell.
byler #1 ship on tumblr 2026, byler #1 ship on tumblr of all time, byler fic being the 2nd most kudosed fic on ao3 of all time even though it was only posted in october 2025, byler tag on ao3 increased by 10,000 fics in a month and a half. byler stocks never stop going up
⛸️ ❄️ figure skater will byers x hockey player mike wheeler 🏒🥅
the au I've been wanting to bring to life for so long now.. thank you winter olympics for the perfect excuse. I hope you guys see the vision bc I have more to draw for it, I think it suits them so much!!
So, I wanted to do something simple for Valentine's Day and this is what came out. You can download the final version with text for free in my kofi (it's a pay what you want but the minimum price is $0).
Maybe I'll make a print of this later.
I'm thinking about making one for some other ship, but I don't know if I'll have time before tomorrow. I might do it and upload it late.
Theater-goers won’t be able to see Broadway‘s Stranger Things: The First Shadow this week — producers have canceled public performances of t
They canceled this week performances out of the blue? I'm sure there were people flying from overseas to go see the play.
This was long overdue anyway. Why did they choose to withhold releasing till now. Were they trying to avoid further plot holes becoming mainstream?
I'm sure at this point all they care about is milking the cow.
How do you feel about this? I would have eaten it up if it had been released last year. I just know it's going to be so frustrating. Even if the play itself is good.
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