Will's Painting and Mike's Epilogue Campaign Parallels: He Knows 🎨📘💔
(screenshot and inspo from this post x)
Seeing this side-by-side visual between the van scene and the epilogue campaign draws interesting comparisons suggesting Mike knows it was Will's feelings he returns in the end.
The first parallel to the epilogue campaign in the van scene is of Will hiding behind El as a lie to confess his feelings, aka the Cyrano trope. Not so coincidentally, sigh, we also have Mike introducing the mage, who the party sees as El, explaining that it’s “a story he can never tell,” while staring at Will, “or at least not the real story.” Literally meaning “not real,” as the Duffers have stated. El’s character represents the “magic of childhood,” only a concept or lie.
For a queer audience, tying El and Will together with magic, the color purple, both finding “happiness,” and through shot progression as this cryptic dialogue about El occurs when Will is onscreen stand out. These direct comparisons illustrate El is an allegorical figure representing Mike’s closeted romantic feelings the dramaturgy points in the direction of Will. Just like Will’s painting, Mike hides behind El to confess his feelings for him.
The most notable comparison in both confessions is how the scenes end leaning toward melancholy. Will quietly sobs, resolving to give up his feelings (“ripping off the bandaid”), believing he’ll have to hide his feelings forever (“endless highway”). Similarly, Mike quietly sobs after Will is the last to leave, eye line pointing toward Will’s D&D binder and caressing it, before the basement door locks Will’s memory away with finality. Paralleling Mike’s ending to a canonically gay character's hidden confession scene suggests 1) he is also gay or queer, and 2) he is closeted due to fear as well as guilt (over El).
Other corresponding elements drive home the point, too. Will gives Mike a pet name, “the heart,” just as Mike calls Will “sorcerer” (while they both have D&D character names they could’ve used). Mike’s campaign awards the party for “courage” and “bravery,” the exact words Will uses to describe Mike as a leader in his painting, tying together both scenes with mirroring dialogue. Using the three-headed dragon imagery, the dragon figurine being in the background when Mike thumbs Will’s binder reminds us, and Mike, of Will’s painting. Will paints Mike as a heroic leader who saves the party holding a heart shield, where, in the reverse perspective, Will saves the party in Mike’s campaign as non-diegetic light glows on him (the heart and light both romantic signatures).
Not directly related to the van scene but to the painting itself in S4, Will grabs his painting, deciding to confess to Mike after he says, “Max, Lucas, and Dustin,” and we see their binders on the shelf, “they’re great, they’re great. But it’s Hawkins, it’s not the same without you,” as we see Mike only caress Will’s binder.
Lastly, throughout Season 5, Mike envisions traveling to a far-away village to live a happy ending with the party, then dreams up a final scenario where Will ends his story in a “distant village” with a man who wears a similar jacket and hairstyle to Mike’s, basically inventing a Cyrano trope of his own. This village happy ending has been painted in a romantic light (“lovebirds” line following its first mention). Yet, Mike envisions his supposed love interest, El, alone while he creates a self-insert for himself in Will’s "village" scenario. In Mike’s future vision of himself, he sits by Will’s painting in his dorm room, the most prominent feature in the shot’s composition. The implication is that Mike returns Will’s romantic feelings in this callback, and these meta-textual hints in his storytelling imply self-awareness.
TL;DR: Mike's epilogue campaign includes hints and callbacks to Will's painting through mise-en-scène, and he uses multiple Cyrano tropes as another parallel, suggesting Mike quietly reciprocates Will's romantic feelings by subtly echoing the van scene confession.
