Hmmm annoyed a bit now though bc yeah every person has their own headcanon but I and probably others have read Henry Bowers as a repressed gay character from the get go and then for years and years, just like folks have with Eddie and/or Richie, and now because Richie is a Confirmed Gay (which is great!!) and because of the arcade scene, other folks are like “So glad Richie got to kill that homophobic piece of shit” and yo, I absolutely get it, but you know when you’ve put so much into an analysis of something that the answer you’ve come to seems like it could not possibly be more clear? Bc I’m over here like wow Henry and Patrick (in the book definitely, I’d say) are such foils to Eddie and Richie in terms of how they handle their same sex attraction and so much of Henry’s content (in the book and the movie) seemed pretty much right away to me like the story of an extremely repressed kid with completely normal feelings about same-sex attraction who became so obsessed with compensating for it that he eventually, when made to look it in the face, gave his identity completely over to It/Pennywise and idk yes that’s just my interpretation but it does, it feels so PAINFULLY obvious to me that he represents what happens when repression is bottled up and fear takes over vs. Eddie in the book or now probably more Richie in the movie who bottled it up but in the end was able to recognize his fear healthily and realize it wasn’t something he also had to hate, so idk for me that scene was a great representation of how its detailed in the book that Henry and some of the Losers like some of the same things but they would never know that because fear sets them apart; Richie and Henry were both going through the same basic kind of confusion and both felt the need to hide it (and on Henry’s end he’d also just lost a close friend, and I’ve written before about how Henry and Patrick seem to be way better friends in the movie and I think Henry had some very complicated feelings about that closeness as well), but one turned inward with it and one lashed out, neither of them knowing what they had in common and how that whole thing could’ve been avoided if not for the fear.
Anyway, I guess my point is something like. Jesus I wish they’d finished what they started with Henry’s character arc in the first film and that his nuance was given the air it needed to breathe because Nic and Teach are fantastic and I trust them completely with that character, but also I understand very well how people would view his character as a Straight White Male, but also good god I have him so firmly melded into my brain as gay that I get ridiculously irritated when I see him viewed as a stock Homophobe Archetype, but also there’s a lot more thoughts that I have on this but whatever. I had a lot of Henry-based problems with Chapter 2 (and none of it at all had to do with the acting) and I feel like relatively defeated about it.
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