Why the hell did they give Jonathan such a fuck ass haircut? I hate like half of the characters' epilogue haircuts but this is probably the worst one. They did him so dirty đ
I spent like 10 minutes trying to find the source of this amazing image of Steve Harrington. I literally had to know who made it, itâs that important to me. Possibly the best piece of fanart ever created.
Anyways, itâs by ayishazebaa on Instagram and hereâs the original post.
I remember there being like a rumor or something about how there was a scene shot in Mikeâs basement where Mike and Will kiss to the song âJust Like Heavenâ. What if the scene is real and will be in the real finale on the morrow (Iâm like 7/8 percent sure that conformitygate is real)?
If you look at the lyrics, there are four references to dreaming or sleeping in the song. Based purely on that, I think it would be a dream of Mike (or Will), but then itâs revealed later in the episode that it wasnât a dream and really did happen, Vecna just made Mike and Will forget about it. Perhaps cutgate is true, but none of the scenes were actually cut, just put into the 9th episode
The Will is being controlled by Vecna theory doesnât make sense because why on earth would Vecna make Will come out? Vecna didnât want Will to come out. Why else would he show him visions of people (Mike) drifting away from him and other awful stuff if he wasnât trying to make Will fear coming out (to Mike mostly)? Yes, Will says âmilkshakes from Melvardâs,â even though that is a general store, but I think this is only because Henryâs memories are leaking into Willâs (or something like that). I think they will do a Will and Henry are 2 sides of the same coin type of deal.
Another Mike is being controlled by Vecna hint that I didnât catch before
You can see that Mike reaches his hand out, then almost immediately pulls away, like he wants to touch Will, but canât. Something is stopping him. For like the last day, Mike physically can not touch Will, and itâs no fault of his own. Even in the group hug, he isnât touching Will; Lucas and Jonathon are in the way. My prediction is that when Mike finally snaps out of it, he definitely will be touching Will at every opportunity he gets.
There is a short segment in The Bridge where Mike is telling Robin about the bomb heâs making. For the timer, heâs using a vinyl. He chooses Locust Abortion Technician by the Butthole Surfers. Iâll call them BH Surfers for short. Now, before the BH Surfers landed on their band name, it was a song they had written called âButthole Surferâ. The song is about some guy who keeps on getting hit on by gay guys in various places in Los Angeles county, and in the last verse, a woman he thinks is hot rejects him, presumably because she thinks heâs gay from all the men hitting on him. The song is kinda homophobic lol, but thatâs irrelevant.
Point is, the name BH Surfers is a gay reference. Since Mike picked them, this could be queer coding for him. What further proves this is that the one to tell him to pick something else is Robin. Yâknow, a confirmed lesbian?
But letâs get into Human Cannonball, the song that was playing during the scene. Here are the full lyrics if youâre curious, but I will only be going over specific lines that I think are hints to the finale or Mikeâs feelings for Will:
âMy imperfections have reduced you to a lowly animalâ
Mikeâs actions (while being controlled by Vecna. See this other post I made for an explanation of the theory) have reduced and will further reduce Will to a âlowly animalâ. Meaning, Will is going to continue to feel bad about himself and thusly, his powers wonât be as strong, he will feel weak.
âAnd tonight youâre probably feeling like a human cannonballâ
I take human cannonball to mean someone who will do a lot of damage, but will die in the process. To say that youâre feeling like a human cannonball, that doesnât mean someone will die 100% in the finale. In the context of Mike, this means Vecna is planning on using Mike to sabotage everyoneâs efforts and die doing it.
Now, to get back to the record, what was the whole point of it? To act as a timer for a bomb. A bomb that Mike made. The figurine that will activate the bomb is a warrior. Mikeâs DnD character is a paladin, a kind of holy warrior-knight type thing if Iâm not mistaken. If thatâs not suspicious, I donât know what is.
Anyway, Iâm calling it right now that by the time the others realize Mike is a spy, the bomb will already have been set up. They wonât know that they are on a time crunch, but the audience will, making the scene tense. When Mike finally gains control of himself, there will be a race against the clock to disable the bomb before it kills everyone.
âIt used to be that loving you was easy, unrestrainedâ
In season 1 and 2, Mike wasnât afraid to show how much he cared about Will, partly because he didnât know that his feelings for Will werenât platonic at that point.
âAnd now, now Iâm only bleeding. Forgone loving, only painâ
In season 3, Mike started drifting away from Will. He was seemingly obsessed with El, spending all his time with her, almost like he was trying to prove to the world (but more importantly, to himself) that he likes girls the same way other boys do. The two have since become best friends again, but in the season 5 finale, after Will expresses his true feelings, Mike will force himself to hide away his love again, perhaps because he feels like he doesnât deserve Will due to the way heâs treated him.
But in the end, Mike will admit his feelings back. This is the only ending that makes sense to me.
Many people watching volume 2 have been disappointed with Mike's characterâ and frankly, I was too. Mike barely has plot relevance, he's stone-faced in almost every scene he's in, and he just doesn't seem to be himself. This is because he's not; Vecna is partly, or fully, in control of him. Read more if you want to know some of the evidence I could find.
Disclaimer: I apologize for the shitty screenshot quality, but this is literally the only way I knew how to get the images (Netflix, please let me take screenshots, I swear I am not going to illegally distribute your shows). I also edited them, but only to crop out the black bars on the side of the screen
Episode 5: Shock Jock
For most of Mike's scenes in Episode 5, he is acting like himself. He hugs Will in the beginning (and I'd like to remind everyone that in real life, Mike is around 3 inches taller than Will, meaning in order to have his chin rest on his shoulder like that, he would have to deliberately lean down). Mike also brags about Will taking out the Demos. He shows emotion.
Now that I have set up Mike's normal behavior, here's the evidence proper
Exhibit A:
During the scene where Will connects with the hive mind, the cracks start to show. Mike runs to Will when he gets blasted back by Henry, but there is something he doesâ or rather doesn't doâ that is majorly out-of-character: he doesn't touch Will. Both Lucas and Joyce touch Will and are much closer to him than Mike is. We know this is out-of-character since Mike was able to touch Will earlier in the season. (In the Crawl after Will's head starts spinning and in this very episode, when Mike hugs Will and calls him an "honest-to-god sorcerer").
He looks like he's observing Will, like his main goal isn't to see if Will's okay, but to gather information. He's not worried like he would usually be. You can see it in his face, especially compared to Joyce and Lucas.
The subtitles aren't on the screen for the Mike screenshot (I don't know why) but Mike says, "Come back to us, Will," Which is exactly what Joyce says, just with the name on the other side of the sentence. Like he doesn't care enough to think of something unique. This is opposed to Lucas who does say something different.
Mike does touch Will eventually, but it's at the end. In this shot you can especially tell how far Mike is from Will.
All these hints happened after Henry exited Will from his mind. This, I think, is the precise moment where Mike's head is infiltrated. Perhaps this is when Henry realizes that Will is stronger than he thought, and so he changes plans.
Episode 6: Escape from Camazotz
Exhibit B:
It's very subtle, but after Robin does her explanation with the records, do you notice that Mike is the one that tells Robin and Lucas to go to the hospital while he stays behind with Will? Almost like he knows that Vecna is planning on Max, Robin, and Lucas dying from the demodogs (We see the demodogs run past Vickie and Robin, but I don't think Vecna planned on leaving them alive, he just cared more about killing Max first). If Mike is there, wouldn't it look odd that he doesn't die? Vecna wants Mike alive, for his plan.
The emphasis on the line: "Do not get pulled over", it's like Mike needs them to arrive at the hospital. like he's counting on them perishing.
Exhibit B.2:
I'm going out of order with this, but I would like to point out that later in the episode, when Mike is talking to El next to the tank, Vecna as Mike lets out a Freudian slip. After El says, "You don't get to write the ending... not this time," Mike says, "Maybe I don't.. but we do. You, me, Lucas, Will, and Dustin." Did you forget someone there, Micheal? Maybe someone who Vecna... is planning on killing? Does Max not get to write the ending too?
Exhibit C:
Directly after Exhibit B, Mike walks over to the room Joyce and Will are in. The music gets more sinister too. The next shot is a somewhat stalker type shot. We see Will, unconscious, and Joyce, back turned. Neither of them know Mike is standing in the doorway. Based on the height and position of the camera, it's supposed to be what Mike is seeing. He is standing in the background of Joyce's close-up too, just watching
Close-up on Micheal as he steps forward slightly, no doubt trying to get a better look for Vecna. No worry in that boy's eyes either.
Camera pans from Joyce to Will as Micheal's focus shifts. Then a close-up of Will, And just after this, Will and Vecna have a scene together, ending with Vecna telling Will he will be his spy "one last time" and trying to get into Will's head.
This entire scene, Joyce and Will are unknowingly being watched by Mike. This entire scene, Mike is acting rather ominous and weird. He never looks worried and he never makes himself knownâ at least not in this scene. The real Mike would sit on the couch and comfort Joyce, or at least show some concern, not just stand there. And for Vecna to show up right after Mike is doing his stalker routine, I don't think it's a coincidence.
Episode 7: The Bridge
Exhibit D:
At the hospital when Karen wants to go with the others to get her daughter back, Mike is in the back, looming, his hands gripping his mom's shoulders like he's trying to hold her back, stop her from leaving. He's looking at her shoulders too, making sure she doesn't escape his grasp. Half of his face is obscured in shadow. The expression is unreadable, but something about it is just... disturbing.
Exhibit E:
I might make a full analysis of Mike during Will's monologue, as he makes tons of micro-expressions, as if Will is unknowingly on the verge of expelling Vecna from Mike's brain with his words. For now, I will focus on the "hug'" Mike gives
Remember when Mike put his head on Will's shoulder at the beginning of Shock Jock, something he would have to intentionally lean down to do? He didn't rest his head on the group hug, when literally everyone else does.
Closing Argument:
You may still be confused. Why would Vecna pick Mike?
If you think back to why Will was able to finally harness his powers in the first place, it was because he thought of happy memories and realized how truly loved he was. And how was Vecna able to overpower Will to find out where Max was? He showed him bad things. Will's power over Vecna, and the hivemind, hinges on his mental state.
Vecna knows this, and if he is smart, he will keep Will feeling like crap by turning the one he loves, Mike, against him. Will cares a great deal what Mike thinks of him. When Will comes out, he doesn't tell Mike the full truth. He says he had a crush. We know this isn't true but Mike doesn't. Vecna is banking on Will not having the guts to admit his feelings for Mike.
But it's like how Joyce said. "Vecna chose you because he underestimated you. I think we all have. I know I did. And that is a mistake I will never, ever make again. But I'm willing to bet everything that he does. And when he does, it'll be the last mistake that son-of-bitch ever makes."
If this is foreshadowing, then Will admitting his feelings will be the final nail in Vecna's coffin, it will perhaps be what gives Mike control of himself again.
Y'know what, i'm tired of people complaining in the Byler tag. Im here to speak my truth.
1. The Will coming out scene was great, in my opinion. Now, people will probably assume Im straight, which i'm not, but I shouldn't have to 'Flash My Badge', so to speak, in order for people to think my opinion is valid. Though I do admit that it was kind of strange that Kali and Murray were there, like are those people really on a need to know basis? Lol
2. People are upset that Will referred to Mike as his 'Tammy' and called his feelings 'a crush', saying that this is queerbaiting. I know this sounds kind of mean, but have you considered the fact that Will did not write the show? Just because Will says something, doesn't mean it's fact. Characters are allowed to be wrong. Will is giving up on Mike after barely trying, and I just don't think that's the kind of message the show wants to sendâ that you should give up on your dreams after failing once.
3. People are worried El is going to sacrifice herself. I believe she won't do this. Firstly, she doesn't agree to Kali's plan. She doesn't disagree either, she doesn't say anything. In Shock Jock, El says to Hopper, "I saw in your eyes tonightâ I saw. You were planning to die." Hopper didn't die, and El won't either, even if she is considering Kali's plan.
4. Many people are pointing out that Micheal is acting lobotomized, and I agree, but not because I think it's bad writing. Mike acts like himself at the beginning of Shock Jock. At the end when Will gets shot back, you can notice that something he does is off, or to be exact, it's something he doesn't do. Both Lucas and Joyce are touching Will, looking visibly worried for him. Mike takes a long time to touch Will, doing it at the very end of the scene, and he isn't worried. You can see it in his close-up; there is no concern behind those eyes. This is out of character for Mike. As established eariler in the season, Mike can touch Will just fine. He's protective over Will, giving Lucas a look when he puts his hand on his arm. For him to take so long to touch Will when he was so eager to do so when Will was in less danger, this means something. My working theory is that when Will was shot out of Henry's head, Henry went into Micheal's head. I don't know how exactly, but it would make sense. Who are Vecna's biggest threats? Will and El. Who is close to both of them? Mike. By taking control of Mike's brain, he's not just spying, he can also plant uncertainty into their heads, weakening their resolve. This is just what I noticed in episode 5 (there could be even more hints I didn't personally catch) so once I rewatch 6 and 7 I'll make another post.
"El is going to die. Byler is over. Micheal is out of charaterâ" and you think that isnt exactly what the writers want you to think? You don't think they aren't aware of what they're doing? I know it's hard to have hope, but just wait and see what the finale brings, okay?
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