It would appear I am indeed one of the very few optimistic (delusional?) Bylers left.
Not saying that if you feel hopeless and need to move on, that you can't. A lot of you have been through this before with other shows. Again and again. You’re tired and fed-up and you have every right to be.
Technically, Season 5 won't be out for another 2+ years anyways, which means the best thing for everyone regardless is to get whatever we need off our chests now and then to just go on a hiatus for the foreseeable future.
When it comes to how I feel about Vol. 2, there were definitely at least a few good moments. If this season has anything going for it, it’s the emotional value. This is without a doubt the most I’ve cried ever while watching the show. One scene in particular that had me on the floor was the scene with Will and El reuniting and hugging. And of course the scene with Will and Mike in the van (DAMN YOU NOAH SCHNAPP FOR MAKING ME SOB SO HARD ALL DAY THAT I GOT A MIGRAINE!)
But yes, I am a Byler. So you could say I was a bit disappointed in that department.
And yet still, I think my take on the later part of season 4 is much different from the majority.
Because personally, I don’t think that what played out in Vol. 2 means that Byler is dead. If anything, I believe it to be more endgame than I did before (well, at least in comparison to pre-s4. There’s no denying pre-Vol. 2 confidence levels remain unmatched. Truly the best era for the Byler fandom to date).
I think my main issue is, like so many of us on here, I thought it was guaranteed we would get to see Mike become aware of Will’s feelings.
And to be totally clear, without this revelation, Byler can’t go anywhere.
Neither forwards, nor technically backwards.
This means the baiting game is not over. Which as bad as it sounds, is why I’m still so optimistic…
Now, if they had made Will’s feelings obvious to Mike, or even the fact that Will is gay as being obvious to Mike, but STILL had Mike behave the way he did in Vol. 2, now THAT would have sucked. It would have been canon rejection on Mike’s end.
But we didn’t even get rejection from Mike.
Instead, we got Will coming off as a hardcore M*leven shipper in Mike's eyes, all while the audience was getting the exact opposite interpretation of this situation; that Will is helplessly in love with Mike.
Will is able to voice the extent of his love, albeit through advice to Mike about his own situation with El, in a way that no one else on the show has been able to. Most of the other characters need a bunch of bystanders to make them realize their feelings and push them in that direction. But Will, he doesn’t need someone holding his hand along the way, telling him what the right thing to do or say is. His love isn’t something he needs to really think about in order to understand it. It just is.
(Which is SO fucking ironic when you think about how Mike always needs help with figuring out his feelings for El and even sounds like he’s reading off a script when he’s trying to explain himself to her. Whereas with Will, s2 monologue teas, it’s the most natural thing Mike’s ever done. Unscripted, straight from the heart… And both Vol. 1-2 continued to drive home this concept, so maybe jot that down..)
It’s just that, unfortunately, in Will’s eyes, Mike will never return this love, which means his only option is to let Mike go. If supporting Mike and El’s relationship means putting himself dead last in every respect, so that his best friend and his sister can be happy, Will is going to do just that.
But as far as Mike knows, Will holds no romantic feelings for him. I mean after all, Will is guiding Mike literally every step of the way to confessing his love to El, and that doesn't sound like the behavior of someone who’s in love with you, now does it?
So why would Mike, throw everything on the line, including the survival of their family and friends in Hawkins by not simply just telling his gf he loves her? All while El is right there loving him and needing his love to fight (presumably), with Will beside him literally rooting for him to do just that? This is very obviously the only option in Mike’s eyes.
Which is ironic, because in a way, I think that Mike has truly never seen him and Will as an option, just like Will, but for an entirely different reason.
Mike views his feelings for Will as childish, something he will grow out of, or at least should have by now.
“We’re not kids anymore. What did you think, really? That we were never going to get girlfriends? That we were just going to sit in my basement and play games for the rest of our lives?”
If Mike can’t love El, then how can he possibly love any women? She’s special. She’s a superhero. He HAS to love her, right? It’s the best option he could ever possibly have. Well, at least considering…
But what happens when suddenly, he comes to the realization that him and Will ARE an option? And that the only thing ever stopping them was himself and his inability to just be honest with everyone and himself?
I think the truth is, there’s a reason that they’re holding off on this revelation for Mike.
It will be a catalyst. It will change everything.
Now, how exactly do you think Mike is going to react to this? The fact that Will was in love with him this whole time and he had no idea?
Honestly, I think he’s going to react horribly, but not for the reason everyone assumes.
Because I would argue that, if Mike was going to react badly with disgust or even just let Will down nicely to confirm it’s indeed unrequited, then the Duffer’s would have just given this revelation up by now. But they haven’t.
Once Mike finds out that Will is (probably always will be) in love with him, and that instead of telling him, Will used his love to help Mike get closer to El, even when Mike himself was having doubts over and over? That Will went as far as to lie about the painting he worked so hard on for Mike in order to rekindle their dying friendship, to instead insinuate it was commission from El, to give Mike that final push he needed to even have the courage to tell El he loved her? That all the moments like this that they shared as of late, was really just Will talking about himself? That the only reason he was able to tell El he loved her in the first place, was because he was so moved by Will’s love for him??
This is going to break Mike.
And let’s be real here, two episodes would not have done this revelation justice.
So now, just knowing the direction they went for Vol. 2, as well as coming to terms with it, I have reached the conclusion that, despite how bleak things seem now, ‘maybe all of this is happening for a reason’ (s2 Mike Wheeler, we miss u).
Which brings me to the other most important piece of the puzzle, which is that, arguably, El needs to be the one who ends things once and for all.
The general audience has been given the impression El is head over heels in love with Mike, and so of course they were rooting for Mike to get on with it and just tell her he loved her.
But that’s the interesting part. He finally did tell her, but her reaction in the aftermath was not something a lot of fans expected.
It seems that she’s distancing herself from Mike, a fact that Will acknowledges to Mike later at Hopper’s cabin, with Mike genuinely confused because he thought he did the one thing he had to do.
He told her he loved her. Which makes everything alright now, right?
Maybe the reminder we got, of that speech from Max to El, about how she didn’t need Mike or Hopper or ANY man to know her worth, was foreshadowing for what honestly needs to happen in order for El to really process and realize her own true feelings about Mike.
Because, although I do believe El genuinely thought she loved Mike, is it possible that Mike was not only having doubts about saying it because of the reasons he argued, or even because of some repressed feelings for Will, but also because El hadn’t given him what he needed to truly believe she loved him.
Mike, like a lot of people, doesn’t need to hear “I love you” to believe that someone loves him.
He wants something more meaningful, or more specifically, something along the lines of the speech Will gave to him in the van.
Will’s confession disguised as El’s, was what Mike needed to finally say I love you to El...
Something I think we also got caught up in, is this idea that the Duffer’s were just going to drop M*leven and throw in Byler, with everything else going on, while they still have a whole ass season to promote for another 3+ years, and to their mostly 80’s loving homophobic audience. If Byler is going to happen, it’s going to be the definition of slow-burn and endgame. That’s literally the only way.
This puzzle is complex, which sucks if you want all the answers now, because we’re just not going to get them. If they give up all their moves, then what is the point of telling the story at all?
Other pieces of the puzzle include things that arguably still need to happen before Byler can, even regardless of the constraints they have as show-runners who run the biggest show on Netflix’s dying platform.
Things like Will and El’s love for each other as brother and sister. Considering all the fans that said Will hates El because he didn’t stand up to her bullies or that he’s a home-wrecker who just wants to get with her boyfriend, is why I do think they needed to debunk these insinuations within the narrative. And boy oh boy did they deliver on that front. Will is the most selfless son of a bitch on the planet, who loves his best friend and his sister so much. They made that very clear. And you can see that despite a few homophobes here and there, the general audience's reaction to Will in Vol 2 is sympathy and to Mike it's confusion and betrayal...
Hmm, making El realize she doesn't even love Mike, after making Will's unrequited feelings for Mike more clear, after making Mike behave like an IDIOT this entire time juggling these two relationships, only for him to become aware of whats going on, and to clearly be in love with Will?
Sounds like a good way to set up Byler to an audience that might not have humored it before...
And like I said, with how important I do think it was for this to happen in order for them to go the Byler route, is why I don’t necessarily see this approach as a bad thing. We even got the Will and El hug in 4x08, which maybe it’s just because Noah and Millie are so close, but I would easily rank that on my top most well-earned moments in the whole show.
We NEEDED that. Especially in terms of what is likely to come in season 5 with Byler endgame...
Also, yes the Will angst sucked and it's just trauma porn at this point. I’m not going to deny that fully. I agree with pretty much all of the criticism in regards to how they chose to do certain things when they didn't necessarily have to, but I also simultaneously am able to understand that it again, maybe this is all happening for a reason. If they are indeed going to have Will play a big role in the final season, than them forgetting his birthday, Mike being oblivious and all this other shit he's been through combined, sets up a really arc for him next season, not even necessarily a villain one, but all of this pain has the potential to lead to a happy ending. And I'm being full serious.
Like we have Finn Wolfhard saying the ending of Stranger Things will be like the ending of Schitt’s Creek??? That it will end at it's highest point. The last episode of Schitt’s Creek is literally a happily ever after gay wedding, there's no other way to interpret that…
We also know that a lot of ideas for the last seasons were planned from the beginning, with David Harbour saying that he knew the ending way back in s2 and that it's beautiful and has been the intended plan all along. That there's easter eggs that will have us going 'WOW this is what we've been watching the whole time'? That it's wonderful?
If you’re the level of Byler truther that believes they were somewhat planned all along from the beginning, then you would also know that if they plan a happy ending for Mike and Will, then they would have no problem killing us this painfully in the beginning of the end, because they know we’ll be the ones cheering on by the actual end, and it'll be the homophobes who are pissed and stuck with this result forever as endgame.
I’m just saying, don’t be surprised when s5 gets closer and we actually see them promoting Byler… like a lot. And we actually start getting in canon hints at scenes with El herself even trying to get them together.
Groveling Mike Wheeler era?
Will finding a potential new love interest and Mike pining/jealous?
Come ONNN! You guys are way more delusional than you’re giving yourselves credit for and I urge you to join me!!!
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