Byler Specific Plot Holes
I wanted to compile a list of inconsistencies and plot holes relating to Mike and Will individually as well as their narrative set up due to byler being queerbait
Will being hopeful — at the end of season 4, it was established that Will had given up on his love for Mike, ripping off the bandaid as he said, yet in season 5 we see that he is suddenly hopeful again and even believes Mike could want to date him with zero explanation. This retcons his s4 plot. Done purely to bait queer people.
Mike not hugging Will — in season 4, Mike is shown to be unable to hug Will at the airport despite being shown to hug every other character in the same exact season, now with zero explanation as to why. Mike canonically did not know Will was gay, so his behavior makes no sense now.
Mike and Will’s rain fight — in season 3, Mike and Will have a fight in the rain (clearly a romantic trope) where Mike yells that “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” Seeing as Mike canonically didn’t know Will was gay, why did he say this to him? There is no explanation now.
Mike saying they are friends — in season 4, Mike and Will have a paralleled fight in a roller rink where Mike yells that he and Will are “friends, we’re friends!” Will did not imply they weren’t friends nor did he imply they were more than friends, so why did Mike say this?
Mike seeming homophobic — because these two scenes were not recontextualized via Mike being made canonically queer despite his queercoding, he now seems homophobic, which is character assassination because Mike is established in season 1 to NOT be homophobic.
Phone calls — in the roller rink fight, Will accuses Mike of never having called him throughout the half a year they were separated. Mike just lets Will think the worst, never correcting him about the fact he did call and was “always whining about it”, as the show itself specifically states. We now have no explanation as to why he just let Will assume he hated him. He now seems like not only a homophobe but a shitty friend.
Signals? — in season 5, Will asks Robin how to tell if someone wants to date you. She then lists off signals to look for, all of which we have seen Mike either do in prior seasons or do on screen in season 5. None of this matters in the end because Mike is apparently straight.
Snowballs becoming avalanches — in season 5, Robin tells Will that all of these signals eventually became an “avalanche”, which led to her and Vickie dating. This dialogue was clearly meant to set up us seeing said signals from Mike becoming an avalanche. We never see this happen. This dialogue makes no sense now.
He’s just my Tammy — in season 5, Robin tells Will she had a crush on a girl named Tammy, and that she looked through a film reel she found and saw only herself in it, therefore knowing that Tammy did not feel the same. This is directly contradicted on screen when Will thinks back through his memories, shown to us as a literal film reel where MIKE IS IN IT. If Tammy wasn’t in Robin’s film reel and that means the love is unrequited, and then Mike is IN Will’s film reel, how does that also mean it’s unrequited? These two things directly contradict one another!
Mike’s eyes being wide open — at the end of season 3, Mike and El have a scene directly paralleled to Mike and Will where they say goodbye to each other before El and Will both move away. El says she loves Mike in this scene, to which he does not say it back. She then kissed him and his eyes are wide open the entire time. There is no explanation as to why now.
The painting lie — this utilizes a very famous romantic trope called “Playing Cyrano”, wherein person A uses their own romantic feelings for the love interest and pretends said feelings are from someone else, often through letters or some other object representing the love. The love interest then falls for the lie, eventually finding out the truth and ending up with person A who played Cyrano. This entire trope was unresolved. Mike never found out the truth about the painting or the love confession. He remains canonically in love with Will’s feelings for him, believing it was from El. Aka, he is canonically in love with Will and will never know it. Insane.
Mike being stupid? — Mike was originally establish to be incredibly perceptive to Will and he was also originally characterized to be one of the smartest characters, often piecing together plot points. So why is he too stupid to figure out that Will lied and is in love with him? He not only has the painting and the confession where Will hid behind El’s name, but he also has a letter El wrote him where she specifically states the painting was for someone Will had feelings for. As such, he has every piece he needs to figure out on his own that Will lied, and is being character assassinated to keep byler non canon.
Will having a crush — in season 4, it was canonically established not only by the actor that plays Will but also by the creators that Will was in LOVE with Mike, and had been the entire show. Given Will was 15 in s4, and 12 in s1, he was canonically in love with Mike for at least 3 years. In season 5 in episode 7, they retcon this by saying Will merely has a hallway crush on Mike, severely downplaying romantic love because it is felt by a gay man.
Feel free to add on to this, too! As I’ve already shown, the only reason byler isn’t canon is due to the creators being homophobic, or otherwise too pussy to make it so. It was narratively set up, and is a huge glaring plot hole and unresolved storyline, making the entire narrative incomplete forever now.
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