What was the purpose of volume 2 and what might happen if we didn't get queerbait in the finale
When the entire narrative is placed back in chronological order, it becomes clear that Will begins Volume 1 still in love with Mike, eighteen months after the events of Season 4. Early on, he accidentally witnesses Robin and Vickie together, a moment that becomes quietly transformative for him. He realizes that he is not alone, that he is not “abnormal,” and that love is not inaccessible simply because one is different. Love is possible—even for him.
At the same time, Will discovers that his lingering connection to Vecna grants him a terrifying and unprecedented ability: he can enter Vecna’s mind and the minds of his victims, seeing through the eyes of the Demogorgons themselves. After speaking with Robin at the hospital, Will asks her how romantic signals become obvious. This question is deeply revealing. It confirms that his feelings for Mike are still very much alive, but unlike in Season 4, they are now accompanied by hope. That hope implies that Mike has, consciously or not, been sending signals to Will—something we already know to be true based on Season 4.
This emotional thread continues into the pivotal scene where Mike encourages Will to take control of Vecna’s powers, calling him a sorcerer. Shortly afterward, Robin delivers her heartfelt speech urging Will to accept who he is. These moments are not incidental; they are foundational to what follows.
During the mission to save the children, Vecna appears and delivers a chilling monologue explaining why he abducts them. He reminds Will that he was the first—that Will showed him what he was capable of. Vecna then forces Will to relive flashbacks of his past trauma, and when he tells Will that he has no place in this world, he specifically shows him memories of his heartbreak over Mike from Seasons 3 and 4. This is crucial: even Vecna knows that Will’s feelings for Mike are not a simple crush. Vecna weaponizes this knowledge to psychologically break him and, more importantly, to awaken his powers through rage. That attempt fails.
Vecna then escalates. He sends Demogorgons to attack Robin, Lucas, and Mike simultaneously, deliberately provoking Will. At that moment, drawing strength from Robin’s words, Will anchors himself in his memories—of Mike, Joyce, and Jonathan. Those memories become his shield and his fuel, finally activating his powers.
It is clear to me that Vecna sent those three Demogorgons with very specific intentions. The one sent after Mike was meant to immediately trigger Will’s powers—because Vecna knew that attacking Mike would provoke Will instantly. If his goal had simply been to hurt Will emotionally, he could have targeted Joyce instead, but he did not. The Demogorgons sent after Robin and Lucas functioned as tests: Vecna was measuring the extent of Will’s control, his range, and whether he could manage multiple Demogorgons simultaneously across long distances. Will proves that he can—successfully controlling the Demogorgon attacking Robin despite being miles away. Ultimately, all three Demogorgons are killed at the same time, their bones crushed in unison.
When Volume 2 begins, Will is noticeably more confident in his abilities, fully aware of the scope of his powers—yet he remains humble, instinctively downplaying what he has accomplished. His love for Mike is still unmistakable, especially when Mike pulls him into an embrace. However, the group is devastated by the failure of their plan to save the children, and they immediately set to work searching for another solution—this time centered around Will’s powers, with Joyce openly believing in him. Having gained control, Will now trusts himself in a way he never has before.
In a later conversation with Robin, we see that even after his childhood film epiphany—centered on his family and Mike—Will still views Mike as his Vickie. He asks Robin how she managed to end up with Vickie. Robin explains that before she ever approached her, she came out to Steve, and that being heard and understood gave her the confidence to try. This conversation exists to show that Will is actively learning, through Robin’s experience, how he might one day envision something possible with Mike.
Later, Will uses his powers to break Vecna’s leg and save Max, which leads to the discovery that Max and Holly are together. Enraged that his first vessel has turned his own methods against him—giving him a taste of his own medicine by “possessing” him for a few seconds—Vecna retaliates. He attacks Will while keeping his consciousness tethered to him. When Will loses consciousness, his mind is trapped in the very place where Vecna assaulted him.
Vecna cruelly mocks him, deliberately triggering his trauma by asking, “Does this bring back memories?” Will, however, fights back, mocking Vecna in return by reminding him that Max and Holly escaped and that he succeeded in breaking his leg. Vecna responds by claiming that Will only has these powers because he allowed him to have them—as if they were a gift. In reality, those powers were transmitted through violence and non-consensual penetration. This is a textbook example of Vecna gaslighting Will, reframing abuse as benevolence.
Finally, Vecna declares that Will was more than just a vessel, more than just a spy. He was his “builder.”
He then reveals the truth: it was Will who built the tunnels back in Season 2. Vecna goes on to say that Will will serve as his spy one last time, and he uses his powers to enter Will’s mind—his memories—in order to locate Max’s body. But that is not all.
What we did not see onscreen, yet what the narrative makes painfully clear, is that Vecna tortured Will. He subjected him to visions designed to break him completely, to terrify him at his core. These included false futures in which Vecna weaponized Will’s homosexuality and his love for Mike, making him believe that those feelings would inevitably cost him everything—that he would lose everyone he loved, that he would end up alone no matter what he did, even if he chose honesty. I am deeply convinced that Vecna showed him far more than this—things we do not yet know, at least not consciously. But what is undeniable is that when Will wakes up after Eleven brings him back, he is psychologically and emotionally shattered.
He has lost all hope. He tells Joyce that everything is his fault—that every death is his responsibility, that the children were kidnapped because of him. He takes absolute blame for everything, carrying the full weight of the catastrophe on his shoulders. And even when Joyce tells him this is not true, he keeps repeating it through tears, consumed by guilt. The fragile confidence he had begun to develop, along with the hope he carried in Volume 1 and Episode 5, is completely annihilated by Vecna’s torture.
This is confirmed during the coming out scene. Will does not come out because he wants to—he does so because he feels he has no choice. Through Max, he understands that as long as he harbors fears, Vecna will continue to exploit them to haunt and weaken him. So Will comes out out of sheer despair, while he is still in shock, still traumatized by Vecna’s visions. And it is painfully clear that even though part of him knows those visions are not true, they have influenced him deeply enough to convince him that his love for Mike is “just a crush” he must rid himself of—that it will never lead anywhere, because Mike is not like him and will inevitably reject him. (You can never truly know that unless you speak to him, Will.) He becomes convinced that his difference will ultimately sever him from the people he loves, leaving him abandoned and alone.
I believe Will comes out in order to strip Vecna of that fear, to help defeat him—but more than that, I believe he does it because he thinks he has nothing left to lose. As the bridge between worlds, he is preparing himself to be sacrificed to stop Vecna.
Vecna witnessed what triggered Will’s powers, and he saw the memories that pulled Will back from possession in Season 2—memories of his family, but above all, memories of Mike, the person who loves him. And we know that Henry fully surrendered himself to the darkness when he believed he had lost Patty’s love—because it was love that gave him strength. So what does Vecna do when he realizes that Will’s power and confidence are activated not only by self-acceptance, but by his love for Mike?
He tortures him with visions until Will loses all hope—until he minimizes his own love for Mike by projecting a rejection that has never actually occurred, since Will has never openly spoken to Mike about his feelings. This coming out was both an act of truth and an act of renunciation. It was meant to let go of his feelings for Mike. And that is exactly what Vecna wanted.
Vecna made Will believe that the only way to defeat him was to abandon his love for Mike and to come out. Yet the series—reiterated again in Volume 2 through Max and Lucas—never stops reminding us that the answer has always been love. Vecna needs Will for his plan. He needs this powerful Will, the one who can control his abilities. Forcing Will to abandon the very thing that could save him mirrors exactly what happened to Henry.
This aligns perfectly with the idea that Will believes the only way to stop everything is to die. Vecna succeeds in trapping Will by extinguishing all hope, by pushing him to abandon his love for Mike and his will to live: “Without heart, we all fall apart—even me, especially me.” Brenner and the Mind Flayer convinced Henry that Patty did not love him, to the point that Henry ended up physically hurting her. They manipulated him into giving up. And that is precisely what Vecna does to Will. Through his visions, he wounds him deeply enough to manipulate him.
Vecna forces Will to emotionally abandon Mike in the same way Brenner forced Henry to physically abandon Patty. Will tries to save everyone by self-sabotaging—just as he was willing to die in Season 2 when he begged them to close the gate while he was still under the Mind Flayer’s control, and just as he sacrificed his feelings for Mike so that Mike could give his monologue to Eleven, a speech that ultimately helped Vecna open the fourth gate.
Vecna has broken Will so thoroughly that manipulating and controlling him now comes effortlessly.
Will says it himself to Joyce—he states it in the present tense—that Vecna controls him, that he possesses him. Vecna has gaslit Will so thoroughly that Will is now convinced he belongs to his abuser, no matter what he does. At this point, Will is so profoundly vulnerable that Vecna can do virtually anything to him, and this remains true even after the coming out.
Will needs both romantic love and self-acceptance. Self-acceptance alone has clearly not been enough, and Volume 2 confirms this. The fact that Vecna ultimately succeeds in persuading Will to abandon his feelings for Mike—going so far as to convince him that Mike is his Tammy rather than his Vickie—is further proof. If that were not the case, this realization would have come in the final episode. But it does not.
The only way to counter this is for that idiot Mike—who has apparently finally understood that Will was talking about him during the coming out—to have his avalanche moment: to connect every piece of the puzzle and to finally tell Will that he is not his Tammy, but very much his Vickie.
Seasons 4 and 5 repeatedly emphasize the same core themes: secrets destroy, truth liberates, and love conquers evil. Will lies to himself and to Mike up until his coming out—and even then, he minimizes his feelings, meaning it is still not fully honest. Mike, meanwhile, has been lying to himself since Season 3, and by omission, lying to both Eleven and Will. Season 4 is, quite literally, the two of them pretending they are not in love with each other. Need I remind anyone of the van scene? Or the painting?
Will tried to free himself from secrets by coming out, but in doing so, he created a new one: he categorized his love for Mike as a past crush that must be abandoned. Mike learning about Will’s feelings for him—and witnessing Will’s courage in coming out in front of everyone—should provoke something profound in Mike. One can only hope it pushes him to finally lay all the cards on the table, to confront everything they have been hiding from each other for entire seasons: the painting, the van scene, their argument in Season 3. They have things they need to say to each other—once and for all.
Vecna knows that Mike’s love could save Will, and therefore give Will the power to defeat him. That is precisely why Vecna had to do everything possible to make Will abandon both his feelings for Mike and his hope. Let us not forget that Mike was Will’s anchor in Season 2 and again in Volume 1—and Vecna saw that. It is therefore entirely logical that Vecna would weaponize this bond in order to reach Will in the way he wanted.
The solution—and what would be a true narrative twist—is that the “normal” one, the character currently perceived by part of the audience as useless due to his apparent erasure and his POV absence, Mike, becomes the key. By being honest with himself and with Will, by finally admitting his feelings, he would save Will—and, by extension, the world. In doing so, he would finally become Mike the Brave, brave in his own right.
And through that bravery and honesty, love would give strength to Will the Wise, the sorcerer, enabling him at last to defeat the one who has been hurting him since he was twelve years old—since the very beginning, on November 6th, 1983.
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