I think the Duffers wanted to do the BSY trope but in an edgy 'we're in on the joke too' way except their own fascination with the subject matter exposes them for who they are.
This is also why I hated Poor Things no matter how many people told me I just didn't understand it. It's indulgence, not subversion.
The Duffers are obsessed with two female archetypes. The blond Madonna and the innocent blond girl.
A lot of fans thought it was leading up to some big plot twist but I guess the plot twist was just the most base level Pygmalion and Oedipal shit. Once you see it, you can't unsee it. Why do these women have no speaking parts?
This whole thing is bookended with El emerging from the woods unable to speak, and Karen getting slashed across the throat this season as well. They can't talk about the bad men.
I've seen people say Mike and El can't fit the BSY trope because they're both little kids and I would have agreed with you around season 4 because I thought El was just as mature as her peers. But the show has gone out of its way to draw comparisons between El's relationship with Mike and her relationship with both Hopper and Brenner, and even this season with Holly getting dressed up as Henry's sister while wearing a figurine of herself that Mike made for her.
A real life Matryoshka doll.
I'm going to bet good money the Duffers thought they were subverting things by turning Mike's fantasy will you be like my brother girlfriend into a doll and a story he sort of leaves behind, while Holly breaks away from Holly the Heroic and becomes a DM herself but. This is what happens when men write women and see them all as interchangeable girlfriends, mothers, sisters, and daughters.
Her not a real people. Her a doll.
Why does the mage look like Karen in her nightgown? To be continued below.
Born Sexy Yesterday is sort of Pygmalion in nature; you have a naive, childlike female character who depends on the male protagonist to guide her and teach her, and win by default as her first and only love interest.
But it's also rooted in an inability for men to find fulfillment with 'real' women. They want this pure fantasy idealized saintly angel, except they put her so high on a pedestal they cannot desire her. It's the Madonna/Whore complex.
El swings across both ends, depicted as both monstrous and pure, blond and brunette. And as a contrast to Karen and Holly and all the other blond female characters, Nancy and Joyce are depicted as ballsy and sex-positive, though the tail end of season 5 again boils them down to gun-totting/axe-wielding girlfriend and mother whose main relationships are still with Steve and Jonathan and Hopper and Will.
And if Holly is trapped in Camazotz with Henry, then the Upside Down is ruled by sci-fi mother extraordinaire herself Linda Hamilton. The pregnant women, Kali the Dark Mother, they're all there to push the Madonna narrative on El herself without any deep thought about how all that symbolism works together.
Season 1, El's a little girl like Holly and Sara. Season 2, she's a monster who needs to be sent back to the lab. Season 3, she's a preteen girl who likes kissing and comics and shopping. Season 4, she's a superhero who frees herself. Season 5, her future is basically...mother.
The men blowing all of this up as some kind of coming of age arc? I don't even want to try and understand.
The three female characters who break the mould and make their own rules are Max and Robin and Kali, who sort of play the serpent in the Garden of Eden this season with Holly and Will and El. Knowledge is power. But Max has no female friends even though 'there's more to life than stupid boys' and Robin has no girlfriend and a bucketload of dick jokes and Kali is dead so. Well.
Even if you want to argue that some male characters are also shown as part of a 'cycle' in the epilogue, their stagnancy comes from a lack of personal growth, mutual understanding, or incentive (I chose to join it, we are one) compared to the female characters who are crushed by the system they try to fight so hard.
Men rarely fight the system when there is no incentive for them.
I knew this season would focus on mothers and female characters but I guess women are fun sci-fi concepts. Bonus points if you're not white.
A last note on this and how the writers treated Will's sexuality. I've always thought they were more interested in gender and these tropes than sexuality, which is why they tied Will's arc to him growing up slower, and extended his arc with Joyce, and contrasted him with so many female characters.
Kali's blood isn't working and it was killing the pregnant women along with their unborn children, unlike El who is the only one who is 'truly' like Henry. Will infected the world, while the other kids are going to bring it into the light which will expel the darkness.
Young Henry's blood being used to power up unborn children in a church. The Duffers love taking their symbolism absolutely no where.
These were horrific metaphors to use with non-white and gay characters when there was no intention to subvert them, especially in this political climate.
The biggest question mark for me is the insistence that Will's powers are 'innate'.
Because when juxtaposed with Kali and El's arcs, it leaves some super disturbing questions. Will is still white and male compared to Kali. Trying to portray his powers as more 'pure' is not it.
On the other hand, Will's sexuality is innate and conflating that with his powers leaves other issues. Will starts the season expressing interest in kissing and dating, but that gets squashed towards the end. The fact that it happens after he's told he infected the world, while the show indexes hard on El's future as a 'healthy' mother is pretty whack. Or rather it is because it's never questioned.
Especially because Will is the only character who gets his powers directly from Henry/Vecna compared to Kali and El and the other numbers who get it through their mothers, and the kids and the flayed who are hooked up via those vagina dentata coded monsters.
But if Will is only connected if the UD and everything in it exists, then he's 'free' once it's gone. Unlike Kali and El. Because...he's pure.
Anyway. Yeah. Am I doing more thinking than the Duffers did? 100%. But this is what happens when you write without any understanding of intersectionality or how all these different stories overlap and inform each other.
Also if you're gross to begin with.
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