How they ruined Will Byers in season 5
Side note (okay what was this tho!)
I doubt I'll say anything anyone else hasn't already been said better but it's just such a frustrating topic because Will could have become one of the greatest characters in television. And I need to rant about it
I'll admit that volume one wasn't actually that good, I liked the potential it left for the rest of the season and the ending scene (which everybody was obsessed with). Which proves we wanted will as the main character, and then you proceeded to make him absolutely useless for the rest of the show. Why even have this scene in the first place?
Will is almost like a red herring, we believed he would be the one to go head to head with vecna. Instead they had him incapacitated for 2 episodes while nobody except his mom seemed to care. Then his character is essentially just watered down to being gay.
This is nothing to do with byler not happening but the way that they negated that relationship did actually not make sense for the character.
"he's just my Tammy" so that's what the arc was leading up to this entire time. A slow burn rejection (a cop out)
Mike can't be wills Tammy - which just means a crush/ or feelings for someone based on your own desperation for love and to be loved.
Because Was that what will felt for mike? Mike wasn't some blank slate to paint his desires and hopes onto the way that crushes are. Robin wasn't in love with Tammy, she was infatuated with her.
Will painted him as the best and truest version of who he was, and understood him on a deeper level than el obviously did. He didn't need to be told by mike that he loved him (platonically) and probably new mike had problems saying it but knew it didn't make it any less true.
What the duffer brothers do is essentially use the Tammy metaphor to universalise the gay experience of unreciprocated love. That those in the gay community all go through the stage of crushing on a straight person, but this crush isn't about the person but about their own insecurities and desperation.
Look this just isn't true. Crushes are always kind of This no matter what sexuality you are, but being in love (really being in love) just isn't.
Will was in love with mike, and this was erased for plot convenience, they decided that he needed to get over it so they made him get over it.
And so destroyed a major relationship dynamic in the show by changing the context of their scenes in other season. Their last interaction is a scene where Will asks if they could still be friends and this was put in as an afterthought because a 18 year old cast member told them they should. Like come on
They didn't do anything with his parallels to vecna, didn't explore the consequences to being plugged into the hive mind, didn't have him do anything of substance whatsoever except save max and holly that one time in episode 5 to then be completely useless.
And that coming out scene? Don't even get me started. How bad it was and how mainstream the show is makes how Will's character was handled even worse. It's a scene that's done to deal with him and his plot and get it out the way, not a scene dealt with tact and respect. It opens up more room for homophobia around wills character, and doesn't portray him with the complexity he deserves.
If Will's character had been written as we had thought he would be after volume one, this would have been amazing for young queer people and just the LGBT communities in general because we finally have representation on a massive level, who is a complex main character rather than a tokenised two dimensional side character that's defined solely by their sexuality.
So this does have wider consequences, because of what it could have been and what it is now. Will is a character who is made fun of by the fandom and media alike (the snl skit) because of homophobia but also because of how the character was written which invited ridicule.
Anyways to sum up, the season was shit, and made me realise that the show itself wasn't particularly good without the anticipation for more to come to fix these plot holes, to find out if theories are correct and to develop characters and their relationships
It's part of the netflix problem for Sure. Why cator to an audience on their phones for god sake, they obviously aren't the ones who love your show. It's the popularity and mainstream media problems where anything that becomes extremely popular becomes worse as a result of watering things down to fit the general public and to be more digestible.
Anyways it's disappointing.
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