About Will and his friends:
I’ve seen some really weird takes lately. It’s surrounding the boys breaking up with the girls and Will wanting to play dnd.
People bring up how other characters are forced to care about Will, but not the other way around. What?
One of Will’s biggest character traits is being a people pleaser. In the end, he will always follow along with what his friends want even if he doesn’t want it or care. He doesn’t want to disappoint them or make they worry, he just wants things to be “normal”.
Exhibit A: Back in season 1, Will could not choose between fireball and protection. Lucas was shouting fireball, Dustin was shouting protection, and Mike was rushing all three along to make a decision. Arguably, Will’s hastiness and inability to make his own decision made him lose against the Demogorgon (in the game). Even at the end of season 1, he’s still the same way, but everyone isn’t arguing with each other anymore so he can roll properly.
Exhibit B: Will backseats all his personal interests to please his father. Lonnie (once again) does not show up to pick up Will for father and son time. Jonathan asks if Will even likes baseball and Will tries to weasel out answering saying, “It can be fun sometimes….” Even when Lonnie isn’t present, Will is still trying to put his interests above his own.
Exhibit C: In season 2 when Max comes into the picture, Will doesn’t have much of an opinion except “Girls don’t play video games.” (that’s literally the only thing he’s said about her.) In an offscreen conversation, we’re meant to assume Dustin and Lucas eagerly approach Will asking him if Max can join them during Trick or Treating, and Will said yes.
“They were so excited…” Even if he didn’t care one way or another if Max tagged along, he was still happy for his friends and wanted them to have fun. You can see Mike’s total annoyance at the situation caught him off guard and despite trying to smooth it over, it fails (and then he has an episode)
Exhibit D: The entire summer it’s implied Mike ditched hanging out with the party to be with El. Based on the big argument that happens later, we’re meant to assume leading up to this point in time, Will has said nothing to Mike (or Lucas) on his feelings. He hasn’t been ragging on them day in and day out about their girlfriends, he’s focused all his energy on making this big well thought out campaign probably quietly channeling any frustration he had into said game.
Exhibit E: Dustin and Suzie. Will is up there with Max and Lucas helping Dustin build Cerebro after walking all that way. If he really didn’t care about his friends interests on relationships, he wouldn’t be there. Additionally, Will never doubts Suzie’s existence. When Dustin fails to get in contact with her, Will suggests, “Maybe Cerebro doesn’t work?” When Will leaves Dustin on the hill, it’s because it’s late (I assume Will doesn’t tend to hang out at night very much) and as he’s leaving, he says, “Let’s do something fun, like we used to?” and “Welcome home.”
Exhibit F: When Mike and Lucas insist on going to the mall to get El a “Sorry” present, Will still ends up tagging along and looking just as hard as they were to find something interesting. He doesn’t say anything on screen, but he’s also sniffing perfume and looking in the glass case of jewelry. As they waste more and more time in the mall, Will’s request to go back and play dnd become more frequent. (Funnily enough, if they went back sooner, Mike and El would’ve have met and broken up in the first place.)
Are you really going to feel sympathy for some dudes who in one breath say they’re so sad their girlfriends broke up with them, and then in the next breath say “Right, women don’t think with logic only emotion.” and “Right. A totally different species.”
Who would take this drama serious? Not Will, clearly.
Will has always cared about his friends, their interests, and what they want to do. Even if it’s bringing new people into the group, he’s chill with that if it makes his friends happy. He’s just not here for the drama. He’s not interested in the conflict. It probably makes him uncomfortable even, he’d rather ignore it.
And another thing, we know Will’s friends really care about him and his wellbeing… but technically, we’ve never been shown that they care about his interests. Not too long ago, Will’s interests aligned with his friends. Dnd, video games, dressing up, nerdy stuff in general. There was never a question if they cared about his interests because they were their interests too. Now? Most of them have found new interests.
Even though Will tags along with them, tries to help them a little bit, and wastes time sitting around with them, they blow off playing dnd every single time. When they do finally sit down to play, they don’t take it seriously and mock him the whole time. At the earliest opportunity they have to blow him off again, they gladly take it.
How can no one see the frustration that would cause? “I’ve been dealing with your guyses stuff all day, but you can’t spare a couple of hours to play a game once the entire summer?”
“Did you expect us to sit in my basement all day, playing games?” or whatever Mike said? Even though Will answers “Yeah, I did.”, I doubt he even expected that, but at least a few times every now and then? Will couldn’t even get that to happen.
Also, bringing up Dustin during his outburst? All this time Will has probably been wondering where Dustin is. He possibly went through the effort of rewriting some of his campaign to exclude Dustin since Dustin never showed up even though he was invited. During the short time they got to play dnd, Will could’ve been hoping Dustin would show up late at any moment and join in. He was on his mind.
He was truly and honestly trying to get his friends together to have some fun. And it probably cut real deep to see dnd no longer gives them joy like it once did. Him donating his dnd manuals makes a ton of sense.
If you can’t see this from Will’s perspective, or assume he doesn’t care about his friends because of his outbursts, I think you’re being purposely obtuse.
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