There was now queerbait in stranger things. Please educate yourself what queerbaiting really is.
-yours truly, someone who lived through the early fandom tumblr days
i might sound a little blunt because i tried to answer this before, yet lost the draft to everything i had written twice. it’s also late as i type this, because of the new year. for those things, i do apologize.
what i won’t apologize for is calling stranger things queerbait. i’m going to provide my interpretation of queerbait, followed by the oxford/google definition, as well as reasons why that i believe support those definitions.
queerbait, to me, is a media’s purposeful hinting at some sort of LGBTQ+ representation for the sake of gauging LGBTQ+ fan interest despite not following through with/not having explicitly stated that representation.
above is the oxford/google definition, which i believe is fairly similar to my own.
yes, we were queerbaited by stranger things. no, this is not in reference to confirmed LGBTQ+ characters, like robin being lesbian or will being gay respectively. this is more in reference to mike reciprocating will’s feelings in the byler pairing.
a lot of the queerbait i think came from season five in particular; however, there were signs before that. people shipped byler because of those signs, because we believed there was a chance of it happening.
i’m going to list particular promo that gave me hope personally.
the below images would’ve been as early as post-season 3, when we first saw explicit signs that will was gay (i’ve heard that not many people seemed to pick up on will being referred to as queer in s1).
iirc, korrasami got together in the last few minutes of the last episode; catradora had feelings of “she doesn’t love me the way i love her” in the penultimate episode before getting together officially (these tweets felt relevant recently, after episode 7 (the penultimate episode of the entire show) with will coming out and describing mike as his tammy—“who isn’t like me.”)
then there’s also media parallels. first ones that come to mind are eyewitness/the s3 rain fight and high school musical 2/the s4 rinkomania argument.
(let me preface with the fact that i have not personally seen either of these respective medias in full, but i have seen the bigger scenes of what they refer to. if i am wrong about any of these descriptions, however, i would prefer to be corrected!)
first is eyewitness/the rain fight, where, as far as i know, the character on the left (lukas/mike) is secretly gay and the character on the right (philip/will) is in love with him. almost frame to frame.
then hsm2 with troyella (a canon couple)—their song “gotta go my own way” is more of a stretch imo, but also similar to the rinkomania scene. particularly in regards to will’s “and us?” and the “well, what about us? what about everything we’ve been through?” at around 2:07 of the song.
and even after that, as mike starts talking about “reaching out,” the song “in the closet (at rink o mania)” starts to play. which is connected to el hiding in the storage closet at the time, yes, but also felt a bit on the nose to start playing during the byler argument.
and there’s little things too, promo-wise. like the entire painting/will airing out his feelings through el, the promise of it being addressed/“mike’s obliviousness paying off” (i believe is something similar to what was said, correct me if im wrong. it’s almost 2am as of writing this portion.), and then having the fact that will painted it never brought up AS WELL AS mike CONTINUING to have it up in his room at the end of the show!!!
but there’s little stuff throughout the show as well. there’s the constant blue/yellow color symbolism between mike/will, and things only going “right” when they’re wearing their respective colors. there’s “crazy together.” there’s mike wanting reese’s pieces (will’s favorite candy) in the hospital in s3 (i forget which episode), the vending machine getting jammed, and, when el uses her powers to get candy, he gets practically everything but the reese’s pieces he wanted. there’s will being mileven’s Biggest Supporter in s4, to him suddenly asking robin how she knew vickie wanted to date her. not make out like robin assumed, like we’ve seen mileven do. there’s robin talking about signals (brush of the elbow, shared looks) and snowballs and avalanches, and byler does exactly what she lists signal-wise, as well as the coke-spurring everywhere when will catches rovickie vs the pipes bursting being the most common interpretation of snowball vs avalanche. there’s will being basked in light when mike talks to him one on one (one of the ending scenes of s4 where will talks about “still being able to feel [vecna]” comes to mind). there’s the creelby connections. there’s the one way sign pointing to mike’s closet. there’s ted wheeler, who is shown to be homophobic (in regards to will, and believing that his disappearance was due to him getting hatecrimed for being queer—“see, michael? this is what happens” is the quote, i believe) crashing through said closet. there’s mike being referred to as “the heart,” then will running towards cardiology(?) after catching rovickie at the hospital. there’s the byler-lumax parallels (lucas/mike & max/will, notably in the hospitals s2/s5). there’s the mileven-stancy parallels. god there’s so much i can barely name them all.
all these signs, and so many more that i couldn’t possibly name because it’s late, and for that i am sorry, gave me hope. gave us hope. if the duffer brothers supposedly “knew” that will’s storyline was always going to be about self-acceptance, they did not need to drag out all these signs that we noticed—lucas’ “i don’t believe in coincidences anymore” this season comes to mind. these aren’t coincidences.
but, sure, maybe it wasn’t queerbait. maybe we’re insane for thinking a show about outcasts with all of the signs i mentioned above wouldn’t break the norm of giving the queer character the arc of self-acceptance and an epilogue partner. maybe none of the above was intentional at all, despite how insane that would be.
byler fans had hope from details in the show across almost ten years. that’s not us looking too into things at that point; that’s more than likely intentional rather than not.
so, yes, stranger things queerbaited its byler audience. you either believe it, or you don’t. what happened today in the finale still happened, that won’t change.
i’m not going to go out and say that i now hate the show because byler isn’t canon—if you hate a piece of media because of a ship and its stance in the canon material, then i personally doubt you could consider yourself a fan of that media. stranger things can have queerbaited us and still hold a special place in our hearts. i know how much it’s meant to people. i just also think we’re allowed to be hurt by what happened.
anyway, i think i’m rambling. it’s late. i just hope whoever reads this takes care of themselves. happy new year 💛💙