Now that season 5 is over and was a titanic failure, I'm just going to start listing things I wish happened that I'll be mourning forever:
Will starts getting visions of himself taking the place of Vecna the more that he siphons his powers. One vision entails Will with Vecna's claw hand as a callback to this A Nightmare On Elm Street 2 scene
We have a Freddy vs. Jason moment where Will reaches Vecna's mind in Camazotz (like the Shock Jock moment) and is able to pull him out into the real world to fight him. Vecna loses some of his power in the fight as Will gains some of Vecna's power from him, but it's a net loss. Vecna is weaker, but Will gaining his powers starts to take a mental and physical toll on Will where his vision of having Vecna's claw hand has now come true. Will now has to decide whether or not to continue using his powers or if it would be unsafe to do so.
Will decides the next and safer course of action has to be to fight Vecna on his own turf - inside the mind. Will needs to break him down from the inside out, to find the source of where everything went wrong and go unnoticed. Knowing he'll need back up as his powers against Vecna alone have created practically a stalemate (because anything Vecna can do, Will now can too), he is joined by El - who gets Will close enough and inside of Vecna's head - and Kali - who helps in hiding all three of them as they root around inside his head for the truth. The trio travel together through the memories of Henry Creel, peeling back the layers of his story, and this is where we begin to see things from the play, including the Patty/Henry - Mike/Will parallels. Their stories may not be the exact same, but Will slowly begins to understand what's happening. But then it all goes to shit as they finally reach the source: the Mind Flayer. But it's not just a memory of the Mind Flayer, it's interactive, alive inside of Henry, and it knows that Will, El, and Kali are there.
In the midst of the trio fighting the Mind Flayer, something within Will convinces him to absorb its power - that if he can absorb and control it, he can destroy it and stop all this. This, however, is a short-sighted plan, and the Mind Flayer takes control of Will instead as a new second host, and kicks El and Kali out of Vecna's mind. It was a trap all along, meant to lure Will in and back to the Mind Flayer. When El and Kali wake, Will's physical body is also gone.
El searches for Will in the void. She cannot locate him, but believes him to be one of two places: the Upside Down, or worse, somewhere in the Abyss where they had been fighting the Mind Flayer inside Vecna's head. She and Kali are ready to go to the ends of the Earth to find Will, and Mike insists on going with them. At first, El believes it's Mike being overprotective again like in season 3, but he makes it very clear that this is about finding Will. He encouraged Will to use his powers and he feels guilty that his encouragement led to Will taking on too much. El doesn't stop him.
As the three enter the Upside Down and begin their search, El and Kali relay what they learned of Henry's story in the mind back to Mike, and when they begin talking about Patty, Mike seems to be putting two and two together the same as Will did before he was taken.
Unable to find Will in the Upside Down, Mike starts to worry again. What if they're too late? What if he's already gone forever? What if he's lost his best friend for good? He's pacing around now and only stops when El draws his attention. They have a heart to heart and El confronts him about his "I love you" monologue in season 4, how she heard Will pressing Mike to say it, and how half of it was lies. "It was not me you wanted to say it to. It was him." But it's okay, because now she finally understands why they've never worked out together. It all makes sense now. Mike finally also realizes then that the painting was from Will all along. "But why would he like to me about it? He never lies to me about anything." El put it together faster than he did, and she reminds Mike how she thought the painting Will was making was for a girl, but now she realizes it never was. It was for Mike, and thus the feelings he expressed to Mike in the van were also his own. "Maybe he was scared."
Now Mike needs to find Will more than ever so that they both can share their truth with each other. He's more determined than ever before and El and Kali have to hurry after him and keep him from getting himself in trouble because he's far too eager and not thinking straight - literally or metaphorically.
They reach the Abyss where they finally find Will. Mike is the first to run to him, but El had to get into Will's mind to draw him out. She finds him and Will pleads with her to help him get the Mind Flayer out before it makes him help it and Vecna take over their world. Much like she, Will, and Kali did in Vecna's mind, El now has to walk through Will's memories to find where the Mind Flayer has rooted itself. Going backwards through the years, she first sees how Mike and Will's love for each other got so complicated that it caused them to fight and retreat into themselves, but as she goes further back in time, she sees the strength they had in that love before they let the world tell them it was wrong. And that's where the Mind Flayer has taken root: the turning point in which they first felt it was wrong to love each other romantically, when they were still just kids playing in the Byers' living room, and both overhead Lonnie and Joyce arguing in the kitchen where Lonnie started making crude homophobic comments about the two boys spending far too much time together and being too close. The darkness and fear overtakes Will again upon El reaching this memory and Will snaps El out of the memory, telling her with a horrified expression that, "I don't want him to know". Upon waking again, El finds Mike freaking out as Will's physical body vanished right after he said that to El in the mindscape. But thanks to what Will said in the beginning of the scene, she knows exactly where he is and knows they have to get back to their world.
It's already chaos in their world. The shadow of the Mind Flayer looms above Hawkins as it sends its two five star generals - Vecna and now Will - out along with all of its foot soldiers to reshape the world. The rest of our protagonists are caught in the crossfire, but they're trying to help everyone get out of Hawkins, 2005 War of the Worlds style. By the time El, Kali, and Mike get back to their world, getting close to the trio of the Mind Flayer as the central hub, Will, and Vecna is impossible without the help of Kali hiding and shielding them.
Now knowing Will's feelings and fears, Mike realizes that the only way to save Will now and help him conquer the Mind Flayer is to conquer his own fears and tell Will the truth. Mike convinces Kali to reveal him to Will, that Will would stop when he sees him, and Kali complies. In the meantime, Kali and El focus their attention on getting to Henry.
This does not go as smoothly as Mike hoped. The Mind Flayer is now turning Will's fear to anger, and it's directed at Mike. The Mind Flayer makes Will tell Mike that it's all his fault, that he is this way because of Mike, and the Mind Flayer forces Will to attack Mike. Mike notices that Will is crying. He doesn't really want to do this. He's still in there somewhere and he would never hurt Mike if not for this fear - a fear they both shared. With his life on the line, pinned by Will up against a wall with Will's hands around his throat, Mike reaches out for Will's heart and the second he touches it, the physical changes to Will's body as a result of siphoning Vecna's powers and absorbing the Mind Flayer disappear as Mike has finally reached Will, leaving him awestruck, and he finally loosens his grip on Mike. (Think, paralleling this Davy Jones/Calypso scene from Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End)
Mike launches into a heartfelt, tearful love confession. He reminds Will of what he told him in the van when he gave Mike the painting and how much he made him feel loved. How Mike fell in love with those feelings and carried them with him every day since. Now he knows that they are Will's and that it's okay, and he doesn't want Will to be afraid anymore, because Mike no longer is. He just loves Will, and the world is going to have to get used to it, because he's not letting him go. He's not letting go of the boy who made him feel truly loved for the first time for all that he is and could be in life, and he doesn't want Will to let go either. Please don't let go.
This finally, FINALLY breaks through to Will. Will is shaking, but Mike is right there to hold him and remind him "it's okay, it's okay, I'm here, it's me, it's me, it's me" and this is real. Everything he said was real and it was the truth.
Now Will knows he can kill the Mind Flayer. Mike's love for him was the last step. It wasn't Will that didn't want Mike to know the truth, it was the Mind Flayer. It always was. It's a cycle and he has to break it. Will doesn't know what's going to happen next, but he has to stop it, starting with Henry again until he can work his way up to the Mind Flayer. This time, the Mind Flayer has nothing left on him. This time, he knows he can destroy it because he has Mike's love. Mike is afraid, but he knows Will can do this, and they kiss for the first time - crying, but happy - and Mike promises that once this is all over, they'll start over at a cleanslate and go on their first date in the open with pride. In true cringe Mike fashion, "this town has seen way stranger things tonight than that".
Realizing that Will's curse has been broken, the Mind Flayer sends Vecna after Will, ceasing El and Kali's distractions. This time, Will is ready, but now it's Vecna forcing his way into Will's mind first. Standing up to Vecna, Will questions whether Vecna really thought he was flying by the seat of his pants here and he tells Vecna that he has nothing left to use against him. He's not afraid anymore. But now Will knows the truth; he knows everything that Henry has been through. The Mind Flayer needed him isolated and broken down so it could use him. Now he's using Will's life to repeat his story - that's why Vecna took him. It doesn't have to end this way, even for Henry. But it's never going to stop unless Henry makes it stop and takes his life back the way Will did. Otherwise he'll only be a shell of who he once was, just like the Mind Flayer that knows nothing of love and only knows destruction. Will tells him he knows what it's like to feel like a freak, to be treated so terribly for being different, that he knows and El knows and there could be hundreds of other people, thousands even, who know what it's like, but they're not mistakes for it and it's okay to be different, and Will is living proof of that. He knows this now more than ever. And they can fight this thing together.
Quick interjection: I'm still working this middle part out, but I'm thinking along the lines of a Darth Vader final stand on Vecna's part. Anyway, to the ending!
The Mind Flayer is forced into the Upside Down and Will absorbs the last of it. This time, he's in control over the hivemind and the shadow, turning the darkness into light. Expelling these new powers, he changes the Upside Down into a place of peace and freedom. It becomes a beautiful place under his control until the last of his power over it fades. It becomes a place of fantasy, a place of escape.
The day of graduation, Mike waits for Will by the gate for him to exit the newly made Upside Down. They embrace when he emerges and Mike asks when he gets to see what Will has done with the place. "Not yet." It's a surprise for later and all their friends need to see it, too. Mike agrees to be patient and we get our second kiss.
After graduation, Will finds himself sitting alone on the swingset outside the middle school for the last time, thinking back on the past and forward to the future as the sun sets. Mike spots him and walks up to him, saying he thought he'd find Will there and telling him teasingly that he has to stop disappearing on him. Will apologizes, but it's all lighthearted, and when Mike asks if he can sit, Will tells him yes, and they share a moment on the swings together just like when they were kids. Mike asks again if he can see what Will did to the Upside Down, that their friends are getting ready to start their new lives and they won't have much chance afterwards. Will finally agrees.
Will guides the party with blindfolds on to the gate. He's up front with Mike, holding Mike's hand as they walk towards the entrance. They're the first to enter, then everyone else behind them. Someone remarks that it feels warm inside the Upside Down now, and Will finally tells everyone to remove their blindfolds. They're standing on a hill by a large tree that they entered the place through, overlooking a beautiful spring valley like something out of their fantasy worlds. Everyone is in amazement and disbelief; it's all so different. They all take to exploring this new world of Will Byers' creation.
Will tells El and Kali that they can make this place their own, too. They'll finally be safe here, free from those who seek to hurt them.
In the end, Mike and Will sit by the tree, cuddled up together. They can come here and stay whenever they want for as long as they want, free from judgment. It's a place of creativity and imagination and they can play out their D&D fantasies here too. It's a place where they never have to grow up, a place that can keep their childhood alive. And here in this place...
"Let's start a new party, you and me."
