completely insane take that i need to archive here: nikki is another one of mike's self inserts. a cool, protective, strong girl with a pink mohawk and her cute little meow meow will byers.
conformitygate is real, but there's no way the whole season — or even a huge part of it — was mike's camazotz. what's the narrative purpose of making it all one character's fantasy when you have like twenty other characters whose journeys you need to serve? let's be for real now — they don't have that time. and why would they even do that? to show us the kid is queer? that's just unrealistic. they're all flayed. vecna messes with all of their heads, but since we're in mike's pov in the epilogue, i bet we'll get to untangle the whole thing together with him.
sorry idk if i sent you an ask on this already or not but you should give us more of your takes/hcs on mike wheeler !!!! i really like your takes on him :D
hiii, thank you for asking! i don't spend as much time on here anymore—i've moved to twitter where i've met so many will stans who see mike exactly like i do (even if they don't always like him jgfdhj).
if you're on twitter, leave your username in my inbox and i'll follow you there. i talk about him all the time over there. but i still love tumblr—byler started here for me—so i'll think about what i can do on here too.
and i do love mike. he was at his best in vol. 1, and that was largely thanks to will's speech in the van. s4 started with mike feeling lost and insecure, looking up to someone older and cooler (eddie—and no, i never thought mike had a crush on him), and ended with will telling him he's already everything he wants to be: a strong and inspirational leader. the heart.
i see many people call him a loser, say he doesn't deserve will after s5, that he'll never move on—and i disagree.
i don't think an 18-year-old being sad on the morning of his graduation, only a year and a half after watching his ex die in front of him, makes him a loser. we know he's moved on after his conversation with hopper. we know he moved to college to actually do something he likes.
according to the duffers, he and will will always be by each other's side, and they're 'not dissimilar to jonathan and nancy'—who 'can still get together in the future.' even if he and will aren't in a situationship in the epilogue, mike will get his shit together in college the moment will gives another guy a second look. mike is a fighter and a leader. he doesn't give up easily.
he and will will be fine. i'll post about him more here too <3
I don’t know if anyone’s pointed this out yet, but the framing here is so paralleled it feels like it should be intentional.
Look at the square framing at the head of the table! The two lamps! The way the lighting feels strangely artificial when we know this crew can do much more ‘realistic’ visuals (e.g. the van scene).
Even the matching glasses with Ted Wheeler and Henry Creel?? This is crazy to me.
The tunnels were a trap. Mike was right and lots of people died in them that day.
This trap door leads to those same tunnels.
Going into these tunnels again, leads to another trap (a never-ending story if you will)
The Mac-Z fight was orchestrated. Vecna needed Will to access his powers so he could use him as a conduit, which was always his plan. All he had to do was put the chess pieces in the right place on the board and wait for Will’s move.
Will's experience being the first "weak" child is something Vecna likes to remind him of constantly. He preys on Will's empathy and humanity and particularly how helpless he felt as a kid. Now Will feels personal responsibility towards the next group of kids. His reaction to being told he needs to play it safe in finding Holly is very telling:
"Holly will die if we don't do something!" "How does that get us closer to Holly?! She's in there, Mom, all alone, I know what that's like. I won't just leave her there!"
Vecna's greatest skill is finding people's vulnerabilities.
“Can you see them, William? Can you see the children?”
Will feels like he can't contribute any kind of meaningful protection to his friends and loved one and he's the one who always needs protecting. By reminding him he is "weak" and a "burden" who doesn't belong with the people he loves (some minds simply do not belong in this world), Vecna just pressed on his worst wound and it worked…
And once he accessed those powers and continued to enter the hive mind, they grew. But as we saw in Shock Jock, Will never really got a good grasp on them for long before he was laid out on the couch with his REM going crazy. And we learned this season what his REM in a trance means. He’s building something. First it was the tunnels. But now, it's something bigger than he’s ever built.
He explained it to us himself
Will is not the creator of the illusions, that’s Vecna. Just like he’s not the director of the play, that's Henry.
Without realizing it, Will has become the architect of Vecna's illusion. He is the set designer for a play the size of Hawkins.
But Mike - Mike is the storyteller. He is writing the script.
And since Will is trapped building this as long as the there is a script and a director, it seems pretty obvious that there's only one way to break the cycle.
The storyteller needs to tell THE story. The one he can never tell.
the way max and mike in the epilogue told us everything we need to know about the ending we got: after all of that vampire strahd von douchebag zarovich (played by mike) just wins and sends will to a town of enforced happiness ruled by strahd von zarovich himself.
maybe it also has something to do with mike grieving his dead mother.
finn said he needed a personal trainer for a one-take scene in s5 where he'd have to run 'kinda non-stop' for three minutes. but i think we never actually saw that scene.
i know people assume it's the mac-z demogorgon attack, but that doesn't add up to me. he barely runs there—it's maybe thirty seconds of light jogging with constant stops. and it definitely doesn't last three minutes; it's barely a minute if we're just counting the part that could've been shot in one take (i'm not sure it was). respectfully, you wouldn't need a personal trainer for that, even if you're the most unathletic person alive.
like, i get it's the same setup as the pic in the st5 poster but. to me, this pic looks a lot more like it could be a still from the show rather than one taken in a photo shoot. does it not?
of course, my eyes could deceive me. but then i have to wonder: whyyyy bother seeking out the most beautiful scenery, at the perfect time of day, with a gorgeously colored sky and sunlight shining from above and hitting just right, only to:
edit vecna's face all over it??? lmao.
!!keep reading for the biggest leap of the century!!
ok so, this post got away from me. it was not meant to be an analysis originally, but i kind of went and analyzed anyway. also, i could be grasping at thin air here. but. i have been wondering ab that pic too often, and i just needed to talk ab it
that picture was released pre st5 if i remember correctly, but i dont remember where, or if anything was said ab it? i even tried to do a reverse image search, and cannot find any official posts of it. what a strange thing. where did you come from, image depicting my perfect st5 au? anyway, back when i first saw it, i was sure it was a shot from the show, bc, as i already said, that is what it looks like. and considering all the big talk in st5 promo ab how this final season would be going back to st1's roots, this is exactly the type of scene that would portray that. and not just visually (the bikes etc.), but also by finally getting to see the full party (sorry, max) working together again.
like, that's a perfect full circle moment. but. (imo) st5 did not go back to its roots very much. at least not in the ways i'm sure we all wanted. i feel like a full party team-up would be best way to cement the message of 'love and friendship makes us stronger' - but alas, the crew was separated for the final battle, again (unless....).
since they're all wearing their ep1 outfits, i don't have much hope that this is actually a "lost scene" or whatever. but i just keep wondering why they always kept pushing the idea of the party all being together. like, i know the party is a huge selling point of the show. but it's peculiar to keep dangling something we're never going to get in our faces. bc when was the last time the party were all united and working together? it was... actually never? i guess you could say it was in st3, but dustin wasn't with the rest of them all season. the closest thing we ever got to a full-party team-up was probably in st2, but even then, el didn't join them before the final ep and by that time, will was out for the count.
thing is, the creators know what the audience wants to see. i distinctly remember the duffers saying this in an interview, and that they tried to make sure to give us all the pairings and groupings that we wanted to see together, as long as they had a purpose to fulfill together. and uniting the full party has the ultimate purpose, becauseeee: a common denominator throughout all the seasons is, like i said, that the party has never been fully united. and the way each season's finales ended was with them never actually fully winning.
and,, what's even more interesting, is that in each season, they never really won, but always went forward under the delusion that they did. HMM. does that concept sound familiar? just for the sake of being on the same page here, the definition of delusion is: "a false belief or judgement about external reality, held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary". what i'm trying to get at here is this: the st5 finale showed us that the party won, but from what we have been able to pick up on from many, many, many (MANY) different details, clues, signs - what the evidence actually tells us is the contrary: that it was really vecna who won (indisputable reading atp).
so. like. it's a pattern: every season, the party was separated, in every finale they 'lost' the battle, and the seasons ended with them under a delusion that they won. meaning, st5 and its finale follows the same pattern as the previous seasons. but it shouldn't, that is not how you end a show - you break the pattern in the final showdown!! HOWEVER. what we must not forget, which is very likely a conscious choice made in this regard; they already broke the pattern (half-way) in the finale of st4. they broke the pattern when our heroes did not believe they had truly won this time, and stood on the hill watching hawkins crumble.
in st4 the party was the most separated it's ever been, which lead them to lose big time. this time though, there was no delusion of winning; we had several characters say this, and a smalltown/hell crossover to cement the fact. then, with the party reunited back in hawkins, we get several symbolic representations of them standing together; the group going to see max and support lucas at the hospital, them teaming up to clean and patch up hopper's cabin, mike's famously gripping promise to will, when he urgently begged for henry's head on a platter: "and we will. we will!" (and i'm wanting to draw parallels to will and mike's earlier sentiment: "that was you guys who saved me", "looks like it's up to us again" "it always is"). and perhaps most important of all: the picturesque hill scene.
so: separation -> no win kept following the pattern. no delusion about their win broke the pattern. and the promise to stand together told us what is essential for their ability to win.
but that's where the party went all wrong in st5. they... lied?? or, we were lied to. because they didn't stand together this time either. from the first ep, st5 shows us that dustin is pulling away from the rest, immediately followed by how his absence at the crawl leads to disaster when they've previously all gone flawlessly. i think this is so obvious. they tell us, word for word, that even just one of them missing is enough to bring them down.
and that's far from the whole issue: it's steve and dustin at each other's throats, it's nancy and jonathan breaking up, it's mike and will back to being super close then suddenly drifting apart, it's el and mike still not understanding or being truthful with each other, it's hopper keeping his intentions from joyce, it's will and jonathan barely registering each other's existence, it's dustin not being honest with the party, it's el and will never talking, it's steve and jonathan arguing about a girl neither of them should be with?, it's will spending close to no time with his best friends, it's hopper falling back into his old ways, it's joyce not allowing will his autonomy and then trusting his abilities to a reckless degree, it's will lying about his true feelings, & & &. IT'S ALL OF THEM, ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE, ALL ACROSS THE BOARD.
and yes, in ep8 they all go into the upside down, but el & co don't go with the party & co. and you can trust that is when things went seriously wrong. so, 'the rightside up' is not where stranger things really ended. following the show's own pattern, we're currently living under the delusion that the party won. but they didn't, and now all we need is for something to happen to get us to see that the threat still lives, so we can gear up for another fight. the real final battle.
ok holyshit i got soooo off track lmao. this was literally only supposed to be ab the pic but i got lost in the overarching themes again. i guess i'm not even trying to say that the pic has to be from an actual scene. what i'm saying is... the reason why they kept showing us the party all together in promo, when they were still split up for most of the season, is:
the party needs to be united for them to be able to break the pattern. they're at their strongest when they're all together. that's how they can defeat vecna and at last truly win.
suzie not being in s5 is part of why i still believe in more content coming. the tower particles affected everyone in hawkins. suzie is not from hawkins. argyle is not from hawkins too, and he's met suzie.
if it had been a slow-burn rejection arc, there would have been an actual rejection—but there wasn’t one. they also wouldn’t have made will hopeful out of nowhere in vol. 1. his storyline about his feelings for mike would have ended after mike "professed" his love to el in s4.
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