One of my biggest frustrations and reasons I can't accept the ending is that AIDS looms so heavily over Stranger Things, and yet there's been no payoff.
In fact, it makes the epilogue bar scene with Will very disquieting to me, since it's almost implied that's exactly where he's headed.
More under the cut, since it will get lengthy:
AIDS was exploding in the late 80's and early 90's, with horrifying rates of gay men getting sick and dying.
Seriously, follow The AIDS Memorial or some of the gay 80's remembrance pages on Facebook (where the surviving elders hang out) and read their stories of the sheer number of friends, lovers, and casual acquaintances they lost in such a short period of time. That's one thing they all have in common- they lost so many people.
They'll post a happy photo of themselves and eight other friends in better days, and they'll reveal that all but one of them were dead by the early 90's.
These men have repeated that while it was just luck of the draw sometimes, there were some risk factors that increased your odds of getting the virus back then. One of them was moving to the big city from a small town.
I've seen that take expressed time and time again, that the men with deep internalized homophobia who escaped their hostile hometowns for the big-city gay nightlife often engaged in riskier sex and and took fewer precautions, whether due to naivety, trying to make up for lost time, or even due to self-loathing and lack of regard for their own safety.
I'm not saying that Will being shown in a gay bar means that he would for sure get AIDS, because not all gay men did, not even the gay men who had casual sex.
Also, gay penetrative sex wasn't the only way to get AIDS. Sharing needles, blood transfusions, and heterosexual penetrative sex all could spread the disease, but for a long time most people associated it with the queer community and specifically gay men, since their community was hit hardest at first.
But it is unnerving to me that this HUGE part of 1980's history, this ONE cultural watershed moment they didn't mention in the show, still lies in wait by the time we see Will at the bar.
Because it's unaddressed, it means he hasn't been shielded from it.
From the finale we got, we don't know if Will ever finds lasting love or lives a long and happy life. All the storyteller gives us is that Will will find "acceptance."
And because they chose to put him, a newly-minted young gay man with no experience or support network, in the bar, in possibly the center of a major outbreak, with no narrative shield other than finding acceptance, there's no guarantee that he would be spared.
I guess this lines up well with conformitygate, since it's a fake happy ending for all of them. False comfort lulling you into thinking they all made it and Will gets the life he deserves, when it's very possible the narrative is sending Will to his doom.
I'd feel more confident about Will's ending not being unsettling if the specter of AIDS had been addressed somehow, like perhaps if Will was attending an ACT UP protest with his partner/friends in the epilogue or doing some political artwork, something to show that he was knowledgeable of the threat and possibly staying safe in some way.
Then I'd think, okay, even if Byler isn't endgame, at least they're being honest about the times and creating a realistic pathway for Will to have a fulfilling life as a gay young man in the 90's.
But the fact that they weren't honest about the reality says to me that it's being omitted on purpose.
Now, it could be that this is because Mike is telling the story and he is not aware of the danger the future holds for someone like Will, but I'm doubtful. Mike follows the news and even small towns knew about the disease by 1989. Yet he still tells a story about Will that seems worryingly unfinished.
This is the part where people rush to tell me that the Duffers are straight white men and stupid idiots who would never even consider the danger of AIDS or care, and that's the only reason why it's not mentioned in the whole series.
And here's the part where I say ACKTUALLY that theory doesn't hold water. As @thatgirlalt found in their investigation, the Duffers' own father was involved in AIDS research. There's literally no way they were unaware.
Not only that, but as I said, AIDS looms heavily over the show.
Will returning altered and experiencing strange symptoms after his assault. The doctors can't figure out what's wrong with him. Will being ostracized by his classmates and getting called Zombie Boy, when AIDS sufferers were said to look like the walking dead.
Vines spreading across Hawkins like a virus. Jason even referring to the evil like it was a disease infecting the town.
Everything to do with the lab and the government, the real life conspiracies that the government was really behind the epidemic.
The blood transfusions with the pregnant women dying. Terry Ives giving the condition to El by being pregnant while given Henry's blood. Hopper unknowingly giving a health condition to his unborn child.
The religious overtones and constant homophobia of the townspeople. Alexei dying in the middle of a patriotic festival and no one noticing, like the gay men whose deaths went unnoticed by America until it was on their doorstep, like the Upside Down seeping into Hawkins.
It goes on and on. Others have said it better than I have, but even though AIDS is not mentioned directly, it's there in the subtext.
So what was it all for? In real life, the greater public had to realize the threat and take it seriously before the virus could begin to be contained. You couldn't just ignore it forever or slap a band-aid over it like the miitary did with the cracks in Hawkins. Soon it was affecting straight people. Children. Everyone had to face up to the uncomfortable truth and end the willful ignorance and secrecy that was endangering lives.
Getting back to the show- if queer love didn't save the day in the end, the townspeople never had to confront their biases to defeat the evil, and we don't even know if our abused gay protagonist is going to survive or not in the future, what message are they sending?
No, I don't believe that the Duffers, with the family background they have, would leave the threat so unchallenged.
The fact that they haven't mentioned AIDS at all in interviews is very suspicious to me. If they were doing some sort of commentary on the epidemic, how could they resist talking about it? If they included the subtext just as an 80's reference and it had no bearing on the greater story, they could've brought it up already.
But if it is important to the show's message, there has to be a reason why they haven't addressed it. And I'm betting that reason is that the story isn't finished.
