I’m starting to think that maybe—just maybe—when Shawn Levy said Finn had to “carry a lot of emotional weight” he was actually referring to the scene in episode 4 where Finn quite literally had to carry Noah over the battle field
First of all: I am happy for Will accepting himself, I am happy about having a visible queer main-character in a popular tv-show and if his character arc or this scene in particular were things that made you feel seen I am genuinely happy for you. You probably shouldn't read the rest of this post, though, because I am going to ruin it for you.
Overall I have multiple problems with this scene, which I will explain in no particular order.
The antiquated and overly dramatic coming-out narrative
There was a point in time where stories focussed on coming out marked an extremely important point in the visibility and acceptance of queer characters in media. If done tastefully, I still believe that a coming-out narrative can be something valuable to tell. Sadly I don't feel like this was done here. To me, the big speech with everyone gathered around felt unnecessarily melodramatic. Yes, the big speeches have been a general problem in the current season, but this really felt out of place for the situation. Maybe if they had put more effort in setting it up - given us a small arc of Will trying and ultimately failing to come out to different people, or shown us what ever Vecna had shown him, anything at all to justify why it does have to be a big speech, why he can't first tell Jonathan or Joyce or maybe (like I thought would happen for a hot second) Steve, because Robin basically told him that Steve wouldn't react badly so it might feel like a safe place to start.
Yes, I know the whole thing with Vecna did technically give him a reason to do it this way, but that's another thing I have a problem with.
It should have been his choice
This might be personal taste, but I absolutely hate that Wills coming-out wasn’t framed as something he decides to do, but a necessary plot-point to beat Vecna. At the very least I would have liked to see the future Vecna showed him, to feel his fear of rejection from his family, so that I could empathize during the scene.
The writing.
Listen. I don’t mind a bit of cringe. But from what I gathered, there was a world-ending thread getting closer by the minute. You are honestly telling me that Will gathered almost every plot-relevant character to make a long speech with seemingly no point, and nobody asked what this was about? Even if we pretend like it makes sense that every character is just ready to accept him immediately, with not a single one having a wait-what moment (which would be impressive for a bunch of 80s small-town america kids, considering my very liberal mother didn't know how to deal with me coming-out as a lesbian in 2018), this scene just feels unrealistic, badly paced and badly placed.
The Tammy of it all
Do I personally think making Byler endgame would have been far better for the show? Yes. But regardless... the whole thing about Robin and Tammy was that Robin didn't actually know Tammy. Tammy was just a pretty girl Robin liked to look at. Comparing what Will and Mike had to Robin and Tammy cheapens their friendship to no end, and I find it incredibly heartbreaking.
Final thoughts
Honestly, I don’t think it's all horrible. I feel like with a different context, different writing or editing choices or even just a bit more scenes leading up to this, so the coming-out itself wouldn't feel so out of place, I could have really liked it. Maybe the final will find a way to change my mind, but right now I am simply disappointed that the way queer characters get treated in mainstream tv still hasn't evolved past this
so... respectfully, there is no way they could've made the way they've realized this coming out scene any more out of character for will than they just did because what the actual fuck...
Also look at the way Mike is framed to be below El, because he doesn't see himself as equal in their relationship. Meanwhile, even when he's talking about Will being a sorcerer and having superpowers, he's still his equal. They're still a team, figuring it out together.
now that it's confirmed that vickie is gonna be involved w/ the supernatural plot i'm manifesting a robin and mike interaction where robin is rambling about feeling like it's her responsibility to protect vickie and how she doesn't know what she'd do with herself if she got hurt, and mike is like "wow you guys must be rlly good friends, that's exactly how i feel abt will!" and robin just stares at him hard
my vol. 2/3 bingo board (but it’s almost exclusively byler)
so, I decided to make another bingo board next to my already existing one to take take into account the stuff that happened in vol. 1 and how it could be taken into consideration (but partially I just copy/pasted from the first board ngl)
+ I want to add (because it didn’t fit onto the board anymore) that time travel or time manipulation will play some role in connection to the upside down
dededos
turnnoffyourmind
kianamaiart
snowghoul
