So, okay, before I totally lose my mind over conformitygate, let me introduce you to the analysis which absolutely blew my mind while I was writing it 🥸🙈
BYLER IS NOT DOOMED IN 5x08! (as we could’ve thought) THEORY aka byler is endgame even without conformitygate (or mb just a bit with it)
I've actually posted about it briefly but here's an elaborate analysis. Disclaimer: I will barely touch the vecna'd theory here, as it's not relevant to the idea of this post; all I want to show you is that byler lives even in the shitty finale as we saw it.
For the evidence I went back to torture myself with episodes 7 and 8 (so you wouldn’t have to lol), and here’s all the evidence I got for us — we’re gonna go through 4 parts: coming out, best friend zone, milkvan break up (that’s still a yes!) and epilogue.
So grab some popcorn asap and walk with me!🍿
1. Mike’s coming out conclusions
So, in the press-conference coming out scene we have following things happening:
1️⃣ Mike finds out that Will's gay
2️⃣ Mike reacts
3️⃣ Mike hears that Will's over his guy
4️⃣ Mike doesn't support Will first (that's a good sign of him feeling compromised, read more here near 💞 mark)
5️⃣ Will diminishes his love to calling it crush and Tammy (I fully break it down here )
So as, yes, I've elaborated quite a lot on points 3-5 already, I'll cover shortly about what happens in Mike's head. Let's stick to the base of Mike being in love with Will. What he hears is:
— he has a chance, he might've got signals, but maybe he’s wrong and it wasn't him, and anyway Will's over his crush, and even if it was him, Will's obviously over him, so he can't dare disturb him now, if he was dumb enough to never notice that he could've had a chance before.
That's hell of a pile of stuff to go through that fast, which absolutely explains why he's so slow to "and me" Will. (He's in love, he could’ve never been first after all things he heard behind Will's words.)
⚠️ If we add conformitygate here, we also might notice that Vecna chose the way of conveying this information so that Mike knew he had no chance!
✏️ Now, the dipshit brothers told us that Mike clocked that he was the guy Will talked about, however, I watched, I guess, that very interview piece and it didn't sound to me the way it's been discussed in social media (maybe I'm wrong, and if that's so, I’d ask you to shove a link to the video of them speaking on that at me). So anyways, I'm asking you to drag your attention back to the show and not whichever interview: that's how we can sum up that maybe Mike did not clock that it was him for Will! (Or that was still bad writing which is always an option but that's not why we're all here today, right.) I mean, I can kinda still assume that maybe he clocked him... But I'll doubt it until I see/hear any evidence of the opposite in the show that that was it...
… that that was it because of how their last dialogue is constructed! Thus we've reached their infamous scene. What happens here?
You remember from the previos paragraph that Mike needed time to process stuff, and that's exactly what he did on the way to the upside down, making several conclusions:
1️⃣ He should be supportive to Will
2️⃣ He shouldn't push his in-love agenda as Will's just said that he’s been over him
3️⃣ And maybe Will didn't even mean that it was him in the first place
4️⃣ So he'll do the best he can: say that he's sorry, admit how oblivious he was and regret that he wasn't there for Will back then.
(5️⃣ The secret 5th option: maybe he doesn’t fully understand his own feelings)
Now, here's the place where a lot of us crashed out as Mike best-friend-zoned Will. But what could he do, thinking all the 1-2-3-4? He could only suggest the best of what's been available — being his closest person (his best friend the way it has always been before) even though romatically it may be impossible for Will's sake (from Mike's point of view at that exact moment).
And to be honest, Mike doesn’t sound like an upset guy who loves Will but who’s just found out that Will’s fallen out of love (crush lmao) with him. That’s why I believe that he either doesn’t know or at least not sure. And once again, it’s Mike, he’s always oblivious! Bc these bastards never talk
(Also the word crush can show Mike that it was not that serious, and also indicate that Mike had no chances anyway — even if he thought it was about him.)
This scene also ends with them sharing a bottle of water (indirect kissing) — so honestly I don't see how accusations of him not touching Will afterwards are anyhow relevant.
3. Milkvan kiss / break up
Here’s “the final boss” that has run all of us over. Can't brag on having to watch it twice for dragging evidence out of there, but bylerbrainrot can do wonderful and fearful things... Anyways, back to the point.
Of course, this scene has been firmly imprinted on the retina of our eyes, and that's exactly how I know that you remember details from it, however, we still need to skim through it a bit anyway.
So what do we have there:
1️⃣ The void that couldn’t be created without bath
2️⃣ Eleven promising that Mike will understand
3️⃣ Eleven initiating all the romantic stuff with him
4️⃣ Mike not being able to touch/hold/kiss his “gf”
Okay, I obviously see Mike grieving during the full second hour of 5x08. And I see Mike caring. But only El — loving. I’d call this whole performance: one-sided milkvan who can still be broken up!
Just one that thing that El kissed him and he did kiss her back of course doesn’t mean that he loved her. He couldn’t even say it again before losing her forever, for god’s sake!
Wouldn’t it be rude to push her away when she kissed him in that situation and said that she loved him? (lmao) I mean, wouldn’t you kiss your ex in such a situation? C’mon, have some dignity hahaha Especially if two people are still very close! (Being friends that don’t lie*, right? Mike called El his friend this season, just reminding you. And he just couldn’t lie to her that he loved her!) It’d be just cruel of him, so he was silently polite 🙂↕️
*⚠️ which is interesting as he did say “ily” in s4, but it was obviously a lie; however, they weren’t friends at that exact time but romantic partners!
“Friends don’t lie, boyfriends do”.
Back to the ways to read their scene:
☔️ Firstly, I thought that it was just El dreaming about a possibility of that farewell. Apparently she couldn’t create that void without her eyes closed and bath available. So I thought it might have been just her fantasy, including Mike being not romantic towards her as he had behaved this way lately + she told him he would understand later why she was going to sacrifice herself (this made me doubt Mike would imagine such a line of hers.)
☔️ Secondly… oh, here we can actually combine this reading of the episode with conformitygate.
As if Mike got vecna’d, he didn’t need any specific conditions to get into that void in the first place! (Same goes for El’s line and the whole situation — it all comes from Vecna.) And the main reason why Mike gets in that farewell imaginary situation at all is quite interesting:
💔 Isn’t it dreadful to not be able to say I love you to your dying girlfriend (if they even are together) as you’re a closeted gay boy secretly loving your best friend (maybe still secretly even from yourself)?
It’s a worst nightmare going alive! A nightmare haunting him till the very credits! Till the very last shot of these SKETCHED credits (associated with an only artist in this show, Will Byers) where Mike's vecna’d mind deletes Will from that rink with El, as it consumes him so fully that he barely can handle all that. As it turns out, he’s still Mike Not That Brave, being afraid of his own feelings and because of that erasing Will from that very picture in his head. (Maybe even because that whole situation of meeting Will in California woke something in him which is hard to hide.) Because of his internalised homophobia, because he's afraid he's missed all the chances. Because he's scared that he's doomed. And aren’t fears Vecna’s field of activity?
And finally, analysing an epilogue that we got, we can definitely tell the ambiguity between Mike and Will — but I want to look at that more through the perspective I gave you above: Mike’s thoughts since Will’s coming out. Here we have:
Knowing all that (his delusions about Will's feelings and his own fears), what we can see in that scene is obviously Mike touching the binders with tears in his eyes, which does make him look pretty much like a closeted gay boy crying over his love that had been missed.
But given all that I mentioned above, we still have haunted Mike (haunted by his guilt, grieving for El whose feelings he could never reciprocate even when she was about to die — which actually made him even invent the whole plot where she had escaped! as a coping mechanism for the whole situation and not only her presumable death). We also still have Mike grieving exactly for his love to Will, being misled by his delusions that we saw in the coming out and tower paragraphs. Which wouldn’t anyhow exclude though that actually byler could happen that very evening!
Let's say later the guys went to a party where Dustin was invited, and Mike got drunk (that girls’ party could include alcohol and Mike looks doomed at the end of the epilogue, so who knows) and blurted out his confession to Will… I mean, not that it should be this exact scenario, but this example shows that actually, yes, byler can go canon that very day that we witness at the epilogue! (If it hadn’t gone canon already based on Mike’s and Will’s glances, which would mean though that in this case Mike’s for real just crying over their childhood having a boyfriend already... which maybe not the case, but it doesn't matter as the point is just to stress that byler is endgame.)
Now, 2. Epilogue boyfriend
Firstly, why do we think that it’s a boyfriend? Is it forbidden for Will to have friends in a new city? New queer friends? To put a hand on their arms?
(Mike Queerler has been pawing Will for 5 seasons straight, I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and the Duffer Brothers said to that — “so what”, “they’re friends? no thanks, best friends” and “everything is up to interpretation”, so we’re working here exactly with that)
Secondly, do you still remember Mike’s delusions? He wants to be a good friend to Will. He thinks Will got over him (him?) 1,5 years ago at least. Mike makes up a boyfriend for Will in his fantasy however not saying even such a thing!
All Mike’s lines that we hear speak only about acceptance and nothing about love! And again he says only things that are important to Will as he told him! Mike just tries to be Will's best friend and finally be there for him as once he’d already failed!
And yep, at this point we’ve finally reached the beloved…
3. Waterfalls! Ohh that’s massive!
How many of us hate them, right? :D
(But I'm actually a fan lmao and I'll explain myself too*)
So the main question here is:
how the hell did we not notice that if Mike can fantasise about El escaping from the Upside Down, it means that she was never even there!
What farewell we even discuss? What kiss?
It never fucking happened! Not in reality!
She never was there because otherwise Mike would know that she was dead and couldn't say goodbye. But of course he can buy all that illusion just because his vecna'd mind tells him there's nothing weird about that!
And that gets us back to questioning why Mike even had that exact picture in his head, and the answer to that is in the end of the break up/kiss paragraph, covering all the “Vecna” reasoning.
TLDR: it’s because Vecna manipulates Mike with his fears connected to his love to Will.
*And if conformitygate is true and we really get our secret byler endgame episode, I still wait for their 3rd waterfall, as probably I’m the only person on tumblr who thinks that it’s actually their foreshadowing signals (as it seems that everyone collectively agreed that it’s a milkvan sign, no one ever discuss it or I just don't see — but I still stand on my point that milkvan is not central here, and milkvan waterfall dialogues foreshadow byler!). You can read about that too in my previous analysis, it’s a paragraph in the end of this prediction ✌️
Mike promised at least one waterfall in their last talk with El about that. And in the series we indeed saw two byler waterfalls (pipe gate + coke can) and single Eleven got all three in Mike’s fantasy which shows that she as a character doesn’t need Mike there! Which also makes me await, once again, the 3rd one for Mike and Will.
Will it be angsty rainy byler accompanied by Purple rain? lmao
Or any scene referring to the rain fight from s3?
Or can we say already that byler happened through milkvan in disguise in a way and that was that very last waterfall?
I don’t know. But I desperately want to see.
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