It’s In The (Family) Trees
Recontextualizing the cinema scene through the lens of Will's intrafamilial trauma
TW: Non-graphic mentions of child abuse and SA, discussed through film allegory. If these themes are triggering for you, PLEASE SKIP THIS POST.
I strongly recommend rewatching the scene before reading this analysis if you can, because the visual language is important.
WHY USE ALLEGORY AT ALL?
Although Noah has recently confirmed in press that Lonnie is significant to Will’s arc, many viewers remain skeptical of theories suggesting that his abuse was more severe than the show clearly depicts.
Some might ask, “Why make Will’s abuse subtextual at all? Why depict it through allegory when it could have been stated outright in canon?”
Because it’s not explicit, it’s easy to dismiss. But there are compelling reasons why subtext and allegory are used, especially when handling sensitive material. In the context of Stranger Things, allegory makes sense for two main reasons:
It belongs to the horror genre, and
it’s practical.
Exploring abuse through allegory is practical because:
It broadens accessibility: The show remains “family friendly” and appeals to a wider audience, meaning its message reaches more people (especially those who need it most).
It protects child actors: This one should be obvious. No child should ever have to perform or reenact scenes of abuse.
It preserves cultural sensitivity: While audiences may be desensitized to stylized or action-based violence, depictions of domestic or sexual violence are far more confronting and potentially triggering.
Stranger Things is, at it's core, a show about marginalized groups seeking retribution within the constraints of a conservative 1980s America determined to silence them. It’s a “love letter” to the 80s in the most ironic sense: look at how bad it was for us back then, and how far we’ve come.
But the shadow of that decade lingers. Generation X (the show’s childhood cohort), now has the highest rates of death by suicide and drug poisoning of any age group [x], a likely indicator of unresolved trauma. These are the children raised by war veterans, who came of age during the AIDS epidemic, who watched the Church’s child sex abuse scandals erupt after decades of silence, and lived through the opiate crisis.
Stranger Things is about offerring catharsis for this "ignored" generation more than anything — in a way that is still applicable and timeless.
And child abuse is already made explicit in its themes: El's "intrafamilial" abuse is made clear in canon: she was abused by her father figure Dr. Brenner, and her "brother" Henry. El is used as a kind of proxy for the show’s exploration of child abuse and violence. Why? Because El has powers. She can fight back, and that capacity for resistance offers the audience immediate catharsis. However, watching a powerless Will Byers endure abuse from his father in direct flashbacks would be far more confronting because he has no way of defending himself. Hence, the use of supernatural allegory: It’s more palatable for viewers to watch Will possessed by an eldritch monster than assaulted by his father, because one horror is fantastical and the other is something that sadly happens in real life.
And if there’s one guiding principle to understand about horror (and the central thesis of this analysis) it’s that horror transcribes our most primal, real-world fears into the language of the fictional.
THE RETURN OF THE MIND FLAYER
We already know that the Mind Flayer represents trauma and PTSD.
Will was diagnosed with PTSD in s2 around the time of his possession, and the symptoms of his possession mirrored behaviours displayed by those suffering from PTSD and anxiety:
Changes in mood
Increased heartrate
Weight loss
Difficulty sleeping and night sweats
“Episodes” or flashbacks
When the Mind Flayer resurfaces in the cinema scene of s3, Will experiences another episode that functions as a traumatic flashback or trigger.
Yes, his reaction is linked to the Mind Flayer in the narrative sense. But if we understand the creature as a metaphor for trauma, the real question becomes: what triggered Will in that moment?
To answer that, we have to look at the intertextual reference embedded in the scene — the movie playing on the screen: Day of the Dead (1985). It’s a zombie film, and that’s not incidental. Keep that in mind as we move through this analysis, especially considering the layered meaning of Will’s nickname, “Zombie Boy.”
Let’s start at the beginning of the cinema scene, where our characters are watching the opening sequence of Day of the Dead.
THE BATHROOM AS A SITE OF VIOLATION
In the opening of Day of the Dead, Dr. Sarah Bowman stands in a stark white-brick tiled room — a setting that recalls both Hawkins Lab (a site of known child abuse) and a typical suburban bathroom.
It's the first thing we see, and it's the first thing Will sees: This is the trigger.
Allow me to explain why I think that.
I’ve written before [1,2] about the recurring link between Will Byers and bathrooms, especially throughout s2.
In horror cinema, bathrooms frequently symbolize the violation of privacy and bodily exposure. They’re liminal spaces (supposedly private, yet often invaded) and thus ideal for scenes of vulnerability or transformation.
For example, Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and The Subtance (2024).
Traditionally, these moments focus on women: watched, haunted, or assaulted behind closed doors. That pattern reflects the genre’s historical alignment of horror with gendered fear — particularly the fear of losing bodily autonomy. (And to be clear, this extends beyond cis women; genderqueer and trans audiences often experience similar or heightened vulnerability around these spaces).
So, when a horror sequence takes place in a bathroom, we’re primed to expect violation of some kind.
It's quite striking then, that Will Byers appears in more bathroom scenes than any other character in Stranger Things — five in total. The Byers’ bathroom mildly resembles the room in Day of the Dead: white, tiled, and claustrophobic. And everytime we see Will in a bathroom, the emotional tone is the same as it is in any other horror — fear, anxiety, or the uncanny sense that something isn’t right.
I'll list the gist of all five bathroom scenes now, just to illustrate the tone:
Will throws up the slug and proceeds to lie to Joyce about it. (A mild body-horror transformation that introduces the theme of Will hiding the truth from Joyce.)
Joyce panics one morning because Will isn’t in his room, only to interrupt him in the bathroom. (We can call this tone "impending doom", it also highlights Joyce's suspicion).
Will notices something is off in the bathroom before encountering the Mind Flayer for the first time. (The space literally becomes the threshold between safety and invasion).
Will gets a fright in the school bathroom before triggering the Mind Flayer once again, leading to his possession. (Suggests that the space functions as a psychological trigger point).
A possessed Will experiences fear and anxiety at the prospect of entering the tub. ("He" likes it cold...).
Clearly, visual language is being used here to communicate that Will has some kind of problem or negative association with bathrooms — a space intended for vulnerability and privacy.
And interestingly, we also have a scene in s1 in which Lonnie showers at the Byers' home with the door open [here]. The gesture is unsettlingly intimate and inappropriate (like him calling Joyce "Babe"), especially given his estranged status — he's an uninvited guest in their home. Leaving the door open functions as a subtle but pointed act of dominance and exhibitionism.
Of course, this reminds me of a traumatized and abused El attempting to change her clothes in front of the party. Mike urges her to use the bathroom instead, explaining that bathrooms mean privacy.
The aforementioned Lonnie scene tells us that Lonnie blatantly disregards this ethos. There is clear juxtaposition here.
While Dustin and Lucas react like typical twelve-year-old boys (flustered and embarrassed), Mike is composed. He recognises that El simply doesn’t understand privacy and takes it upon himself to explain.
It begs the question: has he done this before?
This connects to a later scene, in which Mike realizes that El is abused — though he doesn't word it this way.
When El refuses his suggestion to ask Karen (an adult) for help, Mike immediately understands that her reaction stems from fear. He calls it being “in trouble.”
But Mike’s concept of “in trouble” here is quite atypical — he’s not thinking about being grounded or scolded. He assumes someone wants to hurt her. That's child abuse, plain and simple.
This raises another question: how and why is a twelve-year-old Mike Wheeler so adept at spotting the signs of child abuse?
Due to Will’s negative association with bathrooms — and the fact that most of these scenes occur in season two, which focuses on his trauma — it’s reasonable to infer that Will has trauma linked to the bathroom.
Mike’s apparent ability to recognise signs of abuse (combined with his emphasis on privacy), suggests that he may already know something about what happened to Will. Notably, in the same scene where Mike realises El is abused, this is how he defines a friend:
"Friends… they tell each other things. Things that parents don't know."
El finds this intriguing, as do I — that line feels deliberate. Why parents specifically, Mike? It implies that Will tells Mike secrets that he keeps from Joyce and Jonathan (his stand-in father figure). These secrets are likely to do with domestic life.
I explore this theory more here if you're interested — specifically how it recontextualises the Byler storyline.
With that in mind, let's refocus on the cinema scene in s3. While Sarah stands in the tiled room, there is a sudden power outage across Hawkins.
THE POWER OUTAGE AS A SYMBOL OF FORGETTING & FEELING
In canon, the blackout occurs because the Russian spies are drawing enormous amounts of electricity to open the Gate. Subtextually, the power outage represents far more, because it happens moments before Will’s traumatic flashbacks.
Darkness in horror signals concealment. It’s the space where we ask: what’s being hidden here?
On the surface, that “something” hidden in plain sight is the Mind Flayer. Subtextually, it’s Will’s trauma, specifically his memories of Lonnie.
Darkness connects to two of Stranger Things’ key liminal spaces: the Upside Down and the Void, both of which mirror the architecture of the mind.
The Upside Down represents the repressed subconscious: the parts of ourselves we hide or abandon (hence why many view it as a metaphor for the closet). Its rot and decay symbolise neglected memory. Like trauma, it eventually seeps through cracks into consciousness (Hawkins).
The Void represents the unconscious: pure absence. When El enters it, her body remains behind; only her consciousness moves. When she tries to “piggyback” into Max’s mind, she finds only emptiness — Max’s consciousness has gone elsewhere.
Together, these spaces visualise what’s buried (the subconscious) and what’s unreachable (the unconscious).
That’s why darkness dominates this Will-centric scene: it externalises his fragmented, inaccessible memories of Lonnie.
The NINA subplot made the show’s preoccupation with forgotten trauma explicit — memories "buried" and in need of excavation.
LONNIE AS "HE WHO SHALL NOT BE NAMED"
Now, it's not as if every traumatic memory of Will's is inaccessible, and that's what makes it all the more intriguing.
We know Will can recall his possession (“That was you guys who saved me”), but he never speaks directly of the Upside Down itself, nor of Lonnie. The two are connected somehow. Even when Will speaks to Owens in s2, he refuses to call the Upside Down by name. It’s the only time in the entire series that he references it at all: “And then I was back there again.” Similarly, Jonathan and Joyce mention Lonnie in s1, but by s2 his name disappears entirely. It’s as if the show itself suppresses him — "He Who Shall Not Be Named". (And yes, I do find it compelling that Will and Henry apparently have Harry and Voldemort coding in s5 [x] — it looks like Henry is Will's supernatural and allegorical stand-in for Lonnie).
This narrative erasure parallels the symbolic darkness: Lonnie becomes unseen and inaccessible.
El’s NINA arc involved her recovering traumatic memories by returning to their place of origin — Hawkins Lab. That’s where her memories were both formed and lost, following her stroke (a physiological response to trauma and stress).
Similarly, Will’s memories — of Lonnie and the Upside Down — are entangled. When Will came back to the Rightside Up, he lost access to those memories.
His memories of Lonnie are, in a sense, relegated to the Upside Down. Like El, he won’t be able to fully confront or process them until he returns.
ABSENCE AS "FEELING"
Brenner warns El about this process, explaining that she must recover her memories slowly and carefully to avoid becoming "lost in the darkness."
What does Brenner mean by darkness in this context? It isn’t repression or forgetfulness. Rather, it's about complete consumption: being overwhelmed by the trauma, oppressed, and suffocated. Whereas processing is constructive, this is destructive.
Similarly, when Will is possessed by the Mind Flayer in s2, he becomes quite literally lost in darkness. The shadow engulfs him, and he suffocates on its particles.
This isn’t about remembering — it’s about feeling.
Precisely why Will describes it as such:
Joyce: "What-what is it?" Will: "I don't know. It's almost more like… a-a feeling?"
In context, he could have described the Mind Flayer to Joyce visually, but he chose not to. He was more focused on the feeling it produced.
That feeling manifests through his possession: the experience of being small, powerless, voiceless, terrified. It isn’t memory that returns to him, but the sensation of violation — a body remembering what the mind can’t. ("The Body Keeps The Score").
It’s worth noting once again that this moment was subconsciously triggered by the tiled bathroom — Will was in the school bathroom looking for Dart, before being attacked by the creature set off the Mind Flayer’s return.
If we break down the sequence, it goes like this:
Will in a bathroom → sense of anxiety, fear, impending doom → “I’m not gonna hurt you.” → Will gets a fright → the Mind Flayer (PTSD) is activated → Will is shrouded in darkness (inaccessible memories, feeling).
Almost the exact same thing happens in the s3 cinema scene:
Will is triggered upon seeing the tiled room, and just as he was shrouded in darkness in s2, the power outage now signals that he’s drawing a blank yet experiencing the feeling of violation.
Moving on, we then see the Mind Flayer become reactivated. The power switches back on, Will senses the Mind Flayer, and begins to have traumatic flashbacks.
These flashbacks suggest that some fragments of memory are breaking through. They aren’t whole or coherent, just like El’s scattered recollections in the NINA sequence with Brenner.
THE FLASHBACKS AS EMBODIED VIOLATION
This section is the most sensitive in my analysis, so proceed with care.
Will has two particular “paranormal” flashbacks:
Being possessed on the baseball field (feeling powerless, having his bodily autonomy violated).
Being restrained on a bed as the MF was exorcised from his body (another visual which suggests a loss of control).
Both flashbacks centre on Will’s mouth and voice (see screenshots from the scene below, or rewatch it). There’s no focus on escape or resistance, because we don’t see him running or fighting.
Therefore, the emphasis here is purely sensory, not action-based. (Aka the "feeling").
Visually, we see:
The Mind Flayer entering his mouth.
The Mind Flayer exiting his mouth.
These shots recall the vine from s1: imagery that speaks to bodily invasion and boundary violation.
Sonically, we hear:
Will choking.
Will screaming.
This is about communication, or the lack thereof.
Choking represents a blockage, and being silenced: When Will is choking, it's about the truth of what happened to him being repressed (either due to shame or the loss of memory), and his inability to tell anyone. E.g. the term "choking up" meaning being unable to speak. Screaming represents the desire to be heard: Screaming is the release of intense or pent up emotions, and the demand for acknowledgement of pain. It represents Will's repressed subconsciousness screaming for help and acknowledgement of what happened.
TREES AS SYMBOLS FOR INTRAFAMILIAL ABUSE (#TREEGATE)
Speaking of both choking and screaming — we have this peculiar Lonnie moment from s1: Lonnie demaning Jonathan take down his The Evil Dead (1981) poster.
There's a lot to unpack here.
First, the imagery. The woman on the poster is being grabbed and choked by a decaying hand while screaming.
Second, The Evil Dead is a film about demonic possession, directly linking to Will’s own experience with the Mind Flayer.
Third, while it isn’t technically a zombie film like Day of the Dead, the demon in the film reanimates corpses (zombies), and the iconic image of a hand reaching up from the grave visually overlaps with the zombie motif.
Finally, Lonnie specifically comments that the poster is "innapropriate." Is it the choking? Is it the fact that the woman is busty? No, not quite.
Content warning: discussion of sexual violence in film
There was a very real controversy surrounding this movie at the time. It was even banned in several countries. It's a video nasty, which Oxford defines as: "a film on video that contains scenes that are considered to be gratuitously and offensively violent or pornographic." Sure, it was gorey and obscene — as many horrors are — but it also infamously contains a graphic SA scene. Specifically, the heroine is assaulted by a possessed tree. You can watch the (heavily censored) scene here. The tree ties her up and restrains her, chokes her, and then violates her (though you don't see that part in the version I linked).
The Duffers themselves are film buffs, so it's certainly an intentional reference, albeit a controversial one.
I talk a little bit here about Hounds Of Love (the title track of the album Max listens to in s4) and its possible link to what could become a “tree-flayer” in s5.
Why bring that up? Because s5 is hinting at related imagery:
The Upside Down’s ecosystem is merging with Hawkins (hence the quarantine).
Vecna’s new form is laced with vines and roots.
Will and Robin inspect a tree that may trigger Will’s memories (or produce the "feeling").
Trees, vines, and roots are all recurring motifs here: I believe this is a nod to the "family tree" and "ancestral roots" → Hinting that Will's "real" trauma is intrafamilial, not paranormal.
We also have this parallel between the teaser and The Evil Dead:
Is that the "tree-flayer" entangling Will? And if it is... wouldn't that just mean it's a possessed tree?
If the intertextual referencing isn't enough to convince you there's something going on here, @greenfiend already made the connection here that Lonnie means "Oak Tree."
Oak trees are already associated with fatherhood — being referred to as "The Fathers of the Woods" in Celtic mythology [x]. The ancient Greeks also associated oak trees to Zeus, who was called the "father of both gods and humans." According to mythology, Zeus assaulted many mortals, and was abusive to his wife and children. [x,x,x].
THE "DEMON" IN THE TREES AS THE FAMILIAL ABUSER
As for the theme of demonic possession, it’s worth noting that “Demogorgon” refers to a demonic entity in both Christian and Greek mythology [x]. In D&D, Demogorgon is not a species, but the name of a Demon Prince [x].
Demonic possession in horror can serve as an allegorical tool to explore primal fears surrounding sexual violence, and both bodily and psychic invasion. [x,x].
In this sense, possession becomes a narrative shorthand for the loss of agency to an abuser — the abuser being the "demon" in this metaphor.
And of course, this thread neatly ties back to the NINA subplot once again: In the scene where El discusses her fragmented memories, Brenner tells her: “You have demons, Eleven. You have demons in your past.” What Brenner means is that El is haunted by something, because that is precisely what demons do: they stalk, attach, haunt, and eventually possess.
Which brings me to this small #treegate hint from my Hounds of Love post:
The flayed (possessed) demogorgon represents a demon (abuser), and pursued Will from the trees (from within the family).
Visually, its silhouette resembles that of a man as it emerges from the woods. Even Nancy’s early description of the creature aligns with this motif:
Nancy: “I thought I… saw something. Some weird man or… I don’t know what it was.” Jonathan: “What did he look like? This man you saw in the woods?” Nancy: “I don’t know. It was almost like he—he didn’t have—” Jonathan: “Didn’t have a face?”
The concept of the "faceless" man is about anonymity and lack of accountability. It is the antithesis of the familial, because it lacks familiarity → Lonnie isn’t a father in any real sense; he’s simply biological.
The demogorgon can represent many things (I posited in another post that it's represents Will's queerness that he percieves as "monstrous"), but within this context, it represents Lonnie.
Likewise, the Mind Flayer can stand in for Lonnie as well as PTSD, because all the flayed creatures belong to its hivemind — Will, too, becomes part of it.
Lonnie is in him, figuratively (through possession) and genetically.
When Will first encounters the Mind Flayer in s2, the framing mirrors his sighting of the demogorgon from his house: the creature looming among the trees, with the same clothesline in view.
And then, in s3, Holly attempts to alert Karen to the meatflayer — “Mom, the trees.”
The monster is coming from within the family tree — and the little voice is making a futile attempt to call out to mother.
This show is constantly telling us to look at what's in the trees: to examine the family.
THE PUMPKINS AS CONTAGION
We then see Dr. Sarah Bowman in Day of the Dead inspect a calendar. The month is October — the same month Will was possessed the year before.
#anniversarygate strikes again even though s3 is set during the summer.
The pumpkins on the calendar are reminiscent of the diseased pumpkins from s2.
The diseased pumpkins were caused by the Upside Down's decaying ecosystem integrating into Hawkins via the slug which Will threw up in s1.
Once again, the connections converge:
The Upside Down ecosystem representing genetics (roots, vines, #treegate).
Will throwing up the slug in the bathroom (a site already coded as traumatic).
The intrafamilial coding of Will as “mother” to the slug, and the tentacle as "father" (Will gestated the slug all through November and December).
The visual language of violation and silencing.
CONTAGION AS AN AIDS ALLEGORY
The slug infected the soil and crops, spreading a disease that paralleled Will’s own possession — described in canon as a virus invading his brain.
This is indeed an allegory for the AIDs epidemic, and I've provided a bit more detail as to how this allegory plays out here if you're interested. @pinkeoni also has The Big AIDs Metaphor Post here and an explanation on the connotations of Will's nickname Zombie Boy here — you've probably already read them, but I highly recommend both. Consider them essential readings.
However, I can summarize some key points:
Will's nickname Zombie Boy likely references that he "came back to life" but also the belief that he could be diseased.
Many folks in Hawkins possibly assumed Will had been abducted and assaulted by a gay man during his disappearance (this is what Troy and his father believed to be true).
The children at school stare at Will suspiciously as he's seen leaving early for his regular medical appointments.
Additionally, the focus on Will's brain (and mind) in s2 connects to the nickname Zombie Boy, because zombies stereotypically consume brains.
And Day Of The Dead isn't just a zombie movie, it's about a team of scientists who are tying to find the cure for a zombie virus — that's essentially the plot of s2.
The AIDS allegory extends through this sequence: a virus spreading through Will’s brain, diseased crops overtaken by rot, a zombie pandemic on screen, and then in s3 the infection spreading across Hawkins as more residents become “flayed.”
And that's just the thing, isn't it? What makes zombies (or the Mind Flayer) so scary. They're not just monsters — they're carriers.
Just as bathrooms in horror externalize the fear of privacy and bodily violation, zombie narratives embody the primal fear of contagion.
It's an interesting choice then, to have this paricular moment play on screen directly after Mike and Will glance at each other's lips, and Will looks away sheepishly. Subtextually, Will’s hesitation reads as the fear of being “unclean.” Because Mike also glances at Will's lips, and likely also deals with internalized homophobia. However, he doesn't react to this interaction like Will does. Will has a fear associated with his queerness that stems beyond internalized homophobia: an irrational fear that queerness is contagious, and that he'll give Mike his "gay disease." "Gay disease” being a cruel and common colloquialism for AIDS at the time — an idea that cast queer intimacy as dangerous and deadly. Of course, Will doesn’t have AIDS in canon. But the subtext is there to show us that Will has contagion anxiety, and as a closeted gay teen growing up amid that panic, the association between queerness and contamination was palpable.
CONTAGION AS LONNIE'S "BAD SEED"
Now, couple this allegory with the theme of “roots” — both genetic and familial — being rotten, and the subtext deepens.
Will’s fear of contagion isn’t just about queerness: it’s about inheritance.
Will canonically expresses that his "difference" sometimes makes him feel like a “mistake.” -> It's a loaded word, often used to describe unplanned or unwanted children. The familial coding strikes again. In that sense, Will’s “contamination” anxiety is tied to family rot — to the idea that his sickness began at the root (Lonnie).
And as much as I refuse to downplay the very real homophobia of the 1980s, it’s equally important to remember that many openly gay people did exist and organize publicly during that time.
By s4, Will has been living in California, a state with one of the most visible and active queer communities of the late 1980s and early 1990s. So, Will knows that being gay is a “thing.” Even if acceptance is difficult and coming out remains dangerous, he knows there are many others "like him."
Yet, the person Will most identifies with is El -> Someone fundamentally othered, defined by her genetic difference.
So, when Will confides in Mike about feeling “different,” it’s not solely about his sexuality. It’s about something more unique to him: his parentage. Both Will’s sexual orientation and his genetic inheritance are things he cannot alter. In his mind, they are connected to the same traumatic origin story -> Violation.
And once again, this mirrors El’s NINA subplot, where the fragmented memories which made her feel like a "monster" originated from her familial trauma.
-> The lab as the "home", Dr. Brenner as the "father" and Henry as the "brother").
THE ZOMBIE HANDS AS "BAD TOUCH"
In case you weren’t yet convinced that this sequence was about the violation of autonomy and consent, Stranger Things makes it explicit by including the climax of Day of the Dead’s opening: Sarah being attacked by the reaching zombie hands (in her daydream, no less).
Like the Mind Flayer, if the zombies touch you, you’re done for. The Mind Flayer will enter your body and possess you; the zombies will bite your flesh and spread their disease.
It’s the same fear.
Both are about "bad touch" -> the fear of being touched by something (or someone) you don't want touching you, in a way you're not comfortable with.
"Bad touch" being a term adults use to educate children on consent and assault: bad touch is any kind of touch the child is not comfortable with.
And the survivors in Day of the Dead are certainly uncomfortable being touched by zombies. In fact, the film fixates on hands (grasping, clawing, reaching).
You can see it in the movie’s iconic shots and even its posters (below). The DVD cover even features a handprint -> the "evidence" of being touched.
Even the use of multiple limbs (a horde of hands) recalls the Mind Flayer’s spider-like design. What makes it terrifying is the multiplicity: so many limbs, so many ways to touch you.
MIKE'S TOUCH AS HEALING
Because of this shot, I was inclined to go back and rewatch the series focusing only on hands touching Will to get a feel for the tone, and found that there wasn't much.
Except for one person: Mike Wheeler.
Mike and Will touch each other throughout the series in ways any close friends might: hugs, shoulders brushing, an arm around the other. But what interests me most are the moments where the camera lingers specifically on Mike’s hand — very deliberate moments.
There are two scenes that stand out:
Mike comforting Will about the Mind Flayer in s2.
Mike comforting Will about Vecna in s4.
Both revolve around a he/him: the Mind Flayer (despite being a genderless entity) and Vecna.
Will: “What if he spies back?” Mike: “We won’t let him.” Will: “We have to kill him.” Mike: “And we will. We will.”
Subtextually, this he/him is Lonnie. These scenes also further hint towards the theory that Mike is privy to Will's intrafamilial trauma, at least to some extent.
Otherwise, why is it always Mike who speaks to Will about "him"? Why are these scenes written as private, intimate moments? It implies history. They've had conversations like these — about a "him" — before, and it was always private. (Remember: friends tell each other things parents don't know about!)
And crucially, in both moments, Mike says "We."
It's an intentional parallel, and yes, it is romantic:
Mike is positioning himself as a "stakeholder" in Will's fight for emancipation and retribution from his abuser. It's personal to him, somehow. It's not "we" as in the party, because if it were, these scenes would feature the party. It’s "we" as in you and me. Mike is letting Will (and the audience) know that Will's healing is important to him, too — it's exactly how a romantic storyline should look like when the topic of SA trauma is involved: Mike likely craves intimacy with Will (emotional and physical), and understands that healing is required first. He can't, and won't, make a romantic move on Will until "He" (and the trauma associated with "Him") has been dealt with.
That's why Mike takes it personally (even if the trauma is not his) — because it simply is personal to him: his love for Will, his desire to be closer to him. "He" is a barrier to their romantic union, and Mike wants Will to know he can trust him, that Mike's version of love and touch is safe.
It's not just a story about Will dealing with the effects of his intrafamilial trauma: it's a love story (as the Duffer's already stated), about his lover (Mike) navigating those barriers, encouraging Will to heal "together" so they can slowly and safely break down Will's walls and be together.
THE WALL AS WILL'S MIND (#BRAINGATE)
No surpise then, that we have this haunting, fleshy wall surrounding the Upside Down, creating some kind of barrier. (It also looks a little bit like a brain!)
Visually, it's membrane-esque design likely means it represents the architecture of the mind, and the need to examine self.
I wonder: is this wall the same boundary separating Will’s repressed memories of Lonnie from his conscious mind?
If Will’s memories of Lonnie are "lost" to the Upside Down as I’ve hypothesized, then perhaps he’s also sealed them away behind this "protective" wall.
In this response to an ask I explain why I think Will was "building" a world for Vecna in the library in s1: the first time we see visual language of Will's violation.
Will's trauma is somehow tied into the creation of this world (and could explain why Henry chose him in the first place), and I think it might be beyond that fleshy membrane of a wall, which represents his brain -> Like the subconscious, it's waiting for Will's return, so he can reckon with it once and for all.
We already know that Vecna takes Will at the end of Volume One, and he somehow ends up in his flayed-tree predicament: a direct parallel to The Evil Dead’s tree scene. This suggests to me that Will possibly finds himself beyond that wall (in the most hidden, inner-depths of his mind), to "finish what he started" according to Vecna. This is likely where he will relive his trauma through supernatural allegory.
And of course, this mirrors the NINA subplot, where El could only regain her power after confronting her repressed memories of the lab by literally reliving them, in excruciating detail, to reclaim her agency.
El's NINA ending was portrayed as fixed: she defeated Henry (temporarily), opened the gate (metaphor for rebirth, but also traumatic wounds), and lost her memories to the stroke.
What will the ending to Will's memory look like? Is it fixed, or is he going to reclaim his agency this time? And will he have to face it alone, or will Mike be there with him — like he promised?
