i’m going to hold some people’s hands when i say this, because the level of denial required to defend this writing is genuinely wild. mike’s arc wasn’t “confusing” or “complicated.” it was dismantled. they took a character whose emotional, textual, and visual trajectory had been building toward queerness for years and forced him into a shape that doesn’t match the story anymore.
mike loved el, he cared about her, he wanted her safe, he wanted her happy. but he was never in love with her. she was the heteronormative shield, the narrative beard, the convenient “look, he’s normal” distraction because he didn’t know what to do with the feelings he had for will. and the show doesn’t even try to hide it. even when el was dying, literally dying, mike still couldn’t say “i love you.” not in reality. not in his own mind. not even in the fantasy space where characters usually reveal their true feelings. the words simply weren’t there. that’s not romance. that’s not repression. that’s a character whose heart is somewhere else.
and then there’s the van scene, the most blatant confession by proxy ever put on screen. mike only manages to say “i love you” because will hands him the emotional script. will pours out his soul, mike absorbs it, and then he repeats those words to someone else. that’s not subtle. that’s not ambiguous. that’s classic love triangle construction: one character’s longing powering another character’s relationship.
and here’s the part that makes me want to scream: why are all of mike’s emotional beats given to will? why not dustin, lucas, max, literally anyone else? because will and mike’s relationship has always been framed differently. the blocking, the lighting, the shot composition, the way the camera lingers, it’s intimate, charged, deliberate. that’s not an accident. that’s visual storytelling doing the work the script refused to commit to.
and then, at the eleventh hour, the duffers slam the panic button and try to force mike and el into a tragic romance endgame. and it falls apart instantly. there is no chemistry in that final scene. mike doesn’t even touch her. his hands hover awkwardly in the air like he’s physically unsure about making contact. it looks like someone performing the idea of love, not feeling it. because he did love her, but he was never in love with her. the emotional groundwork was never laid with her. it was laid with will.
the text pointed to mike and will. the cinematography pointed to mike and will. the emotional architecture pointed to mike and will. and then they did a last‑minute 180 that snapped the narrative spine, and that’s why mike’s ending feels wrong. because it is wrong. it contradicts everything the story spent years building.
argue with a wall. argue with the lighting. argue with the blocking. argue with the text. you’ll still be wrong.
