Let’s talk about Jane Hopper’s “romantic” feelings (she’s my baby and I’ve been waiting to make a post just about her)
This my personal opinion and I absolutely don’t mind anyone disagreeing. People focus on Mike’s complexity but to me Jane is harder to read. So let’s agree to disagree 🫶 I appreciate you if you still read this long ass post
We spend so much time dissecting Byler and psychoanalyzing Mike’s feelings that I don’t think we sit with Jane’s perspective long enough. Her story is about independence, emancipation, and finding out who she is. But the need for independence does not automatically cancel out love. You can love someone and still realize you need to leave in order to become whole. You can want someone and still understand that staying with them is not where you’ll grow. So I don’t think it’s always fair to frame it as a clean split. Those things are not mutually exclusive and can coexist.
HOWEVER, I don’t think that’s the case here. Here’s my long, stubborn and unprompted opinion: I don’t think Jane was ever in love with Mike Wheeler.
And I’m not saying that because of Byler. I’m kinda tired of repeating this but I jumped on the Byler bus way later because I always need as much evidence as I can get. I disliked Mileven from the very beginning, before I even knew what Byler was. It always felt wrong to me at its foundation because that relationship started on uneven and low-key toxic ground. A nerdy boy who suddenly sees his supernatural fantasies come to life through a mysterious girl who is entirely dependent on him. And we know how deeply Mike is drawn to being needed, to being the person someone relies on. At the same time, Jane isn’t just a girl to him since she is the key to finding Will, someone profoundly important in his life. She is miracle, a fantasy, a solution, all wrapped into one. But this isn’t about Mike Wheeler. I want to talk about precious Jane.
Jane had no social cues, no understanding of friendship, no framework for romance. Suddenly there is this boy who takes her under his wing, introduces her to the world, explains right and wrong, teaches her what promises are, what loyalty is. He becomes her interpreter of the outside world. So ofc dependency forms early. How could it not when he’s like safety, knowledge and belonging.
And then she has her first kiss after JUST imagining him as a brother she might have in a new safe and loving family. I repeat: she did NOT conceptualize him romantically at first. She saw him as family. So when that shifts into a kiss, into a romantic label, how are we supposed to believe she fully understood what that meant? She didn’t even understand what romance was or have the emotional literacy for it.
Then season 2 isolates her all over again. That tiny, fragile taste of normalcy is ripped away, and she is back in confinement. Ofc she clings to the memory of Mike. Ofc the Snow Ball promise becomes larger in her mind. When the only thing you have to fill your time is television, especially romantic television, your perception shifts. The kiss becomes cinematic, the dance a destiny. The boy who kissed you like the couples on screen must mean something bigger, because that’s what the screen tells you.
Even people raised in normal circumstances internalize what media teaches them about love. Now imagine someone like Jane, whose entire understanding of relationships comes secondhand. The logic of it is almost constructed and mechanical: a boy is kind to me, he kisses me like on TV, so it’s love, so this is what comes next. It doesn’t come from an internal understanding of desire but from imitation.
Season 3 makes it even worse as their dynamic turn into something that feels like codependency. Now it goes both ways. Mike throws himself into the relationship with an intensity that’s less like organic, natural love and more like performance. It’s like he was trying to grow up too fast (grow from his feelings for a certain someone ughm 👀), to ground himself into a heterosexual teenage script of what “normal” looks like. Meanwhile, Jane is isolated again but just in a cozier cage. Her boyfriend becomes her primary connection to the outside world. They don’t talk about much, they don’t share interests, they just make out because that’s what couples do. For Mike, It’s easier than actually communicating and avoids difficult conversations. And for Jane, it follows the script she’s been given because what else are couples supposed to do?
Then Max comes into the picture and it’s one of the most liberating and heartbreaking moments of Jane’s arc. For the first time, she explores herself through clothes, preferences and opinions. When she asked “How do I know what I like?” That line alone destabilized the entire “she’s in love” argument for me. How can you be certain about loving someone romantically when you are still figuring out whether you even like a color, a style or a pair of shoes? When your own identity is still forming?
The way she looked at Max reminded me of how she looked at Mike in season 1 as if she’s wide-eyed, curious and absorbing the world around her. Then during that silly breakup, she honestly looked more hurt by betrayal than by the idea of losing the relationship itself. Being lied to by someone she trusted hurt more than the separation. After that, her focus drifts and her attention is elsewhere for most of the season. It didn’t feel like Mike was her emotional center anymore.
Then Hopper “dies,” she moves states, integrates high school, exposes herself to social dynamics she has never navigated before. And that’s when we suddenly see her investing heavily in her relationship with Mike in a way that felt exaggerated. She built him a shrine in her bedroom, his name and damn face is everywhere. Drawings of him and letters and keepsakes…
The first time I watched that, I still wasn’t a Byler (better late than sorry 🫣). I just felt uncomfortable with that scene because It didn’t feel like natural, organic love. It was like she was clutching onto something. She was lonely and ostracized and likely watching other teenagers publicly experience romance and thinking, I have that too. I have a boyfriend. I’m normal. I’m okay.
Also, the show gives us nothing about her maintaining contact with her other friends and especially Max who was the one person who showed her she could exist outside of a relationship. She was isolated again in another way BUT as she gained more exposure to the world, her needs expanded. I believe that’s when she started sensing the flaws, that something was missing, that it’s not enough. But instead of confronting it, she doubled down, exaggerated devotion and romanticized what she had. Feel free to disagree but to me that’s overcompensating and self-preservation.
When she lost her powers, she was stripped bare. Without them, she is just Jane and I think, subconsciously, she always feared that her powers were what made Mike choose her and kept him invested. If I’m not special, if I can’t save everyone, what am I? Does he love me, or does he love the superhero?
And every time Mike opened his damn mouth and leaned into the “you’re my superhero” crap, it reinforced that insecurity. He idolizes her strength and glorifies her abilities. But does he know and see her as a person separate from that? Does he understand her trauma deeply enough to reach her with words? Can he see her without the pedestal he puts her on? At the same time, Mike also seemed to be outgrowing the fantasy too. The brave superhero narrative isn’t enough anymore to sustain his (cover) feelings the way it once did. By S4, they’re both clinging to something that doesn’t fit.
My take on where they stood: I truly believe the letter she left before going with Owens was the end of that relationship. I also don’t think she believed his surfer pizza confession. If she had drawn strength from his words and felt truly seen, she would’ve turned to him afterward and would’ve sought comfort in him after losing to Vecna. Instead, she withdrew and didnt talk to him for the rest of the trip. She only broke down and showed vulnerability when Hopper appeared. Her dear dad, not the guy who just confessed his “undying love” to her. So If that declaration was meant to shift something in her emotionally, it likely didn’t.
So yeah, her independence arc didn’t happen despite her love for Mike but alongside the process of navigating what he meant to her. She clung to the idea of love and a boyfriend because it offered stability and normalcy, especially when Mike framed their bond romantically from the beginning. When someone categorizes your connection that way early on, it becomes terrifying to imagine redefining it because it might mean losing them entirely. But by season 4, the illusion fractures and she begins to understand that she has been pretending, just as he has been pretending. I really loved how they paralleled each other in the beginning of S4.
Also, as a conformity and shadow gater, I’m convinced they were already broken up by season 5. Could Jane, in another phase of her life, with more self-awareness, emotional grounding, and no monsters to hunt her, have loved Mike in a healthy, sustainable way? MAYBE. But the Jane we’ve seen so far, a girl socialized through TV, still learning what she likes, still separating safety from affection, still fighting for her survival, didn’t have the right tools and experience to distinguish affection and dependency from true romantic love.
I don’t think she was in love with Mike and I don’t think she truly understood what being in love felt like. On a shadier note, once she fully becomes herself outside of powers and survival, I don’t really see her going for someone like Mike. Just saying 👀