I am currently surrounded by takes of people saying “Jonathan’s character has been ruined” and “Steve’s character has been ruined”.
I know you just wrote an analysis for Steve and discussed the intentional regression of his character in S4 (which was a really great read btw!). Would also mind breaking down Jonathan’s character arc and why he was represented the way he was in S4?
His arc is very much about his caretaking and parentification towards Will and in season 4 we see this side of him, for the first time not needing to work to support his family, and even with El as an additional trusted sibling to be there for him - even if not an older sibling and also another younger sibling he himself feels protective over.
But overall, it's sort of this kind of empty nesting phase we're seeing him in. Will is safe from the upside down. The family is financially stable. Will has a sibling who is a friend always present with him in El. His protective role as a parent is very much filled and he doesn't know what to do with himself. He doesn't know what to do with his time. He doesn't have to worry over Will, he doesn't have to work, we see him for the first time with a friend because he actually has free time for the first time in a long time.
And he doesn't know what to do with it. He kills time by getting high and...hitting baseballs at junkyard cars?? He doesn't exactly have "hobbies" the way Will paints or El does crafts.
But most importantly, we see the continuing interest to deprioritize his wants in favor of Will. His arc is about the sacrifices he makes for Will and this habit he has of doing so. That made sense for a time but Will is getting older now, and Jonathan needs to have his own life. But he doesn't know how...
This is most clear in his conversation with Argyle about Nancy and college in season 4 episode 2. The entire reason he thinks he should break up with Nancy is because he wants to stay closer to Will, so he feels he can't leave and go anywhere beyond Lenora Community College to do that.
But in season 5, I think his arc that he will end at is allowing himself to have his own life outside of parenting. That is the core of their relationship issues. His distance from Will comes from the fact that he has yet to find a balance of how near or far he can go from Will now that they're all doing better, and at first he strikes that balance too far this time.
I recently made a post about how this prioritization also comes up as the true source of his fight with Nancy in season 3. He doesn't want to be fired so he can support his family and prioritizes that over his relationship and the sexism Nancy is being bombarded with a struggling to cope with, prioritizes it over supporting her in that. That is their issue in season 3. It all comes back to this same thing.
In season 1 in my recent rewatch with his concerns over his mom's mental health, I really saw this fear in him that...he'd have to take care of her. Not be able to live his own life, feel that he can't move out or go off to college because there's no one else around to drag her away from the lights and make sure she eats and sleeps.
His whole character arc is based in that he has always taken on this caretaking role in the family. Of his brother, but also of his own mother at times. In season 1, he felt he needed to be that rock. He plans the funeral, he buys the casket, he gets her up to go to the morgue.
In season 4, we see him confused and a bit back and forth on how much to be figuring out what to do with his own time as an individual person vs being there for Will still. He doesn't totally know who he is because so much of his identity is as Will's brother. That's what we're seeing in season 4. That identity crisis. Who am I if not Will's caretaker? And part of a crisis like that is the instinct to not stray from what you've always known. So he continues to plan his future around it: college. Sacrificing his own wants and relationships, specifically his relationship with Nancy, in order to stay in Lenora rather than go with her to Emerson.
He wants to go with her. But he feels an obligation towards his family. In season 5, that weight needs to be taken off of him. And I think Hopper will be especially helpful in that, even just subtly or background. The presence of a father for Will now. And a strong and protective one at that, one he knows and his built trust with over the years. Unlike Bob, who followed a classic pattern with Jonathan of parentified children not wanting to pass the baton to a new comer, Hopper is not a new-comer. He can't feel safe that Will is in his hands and that he is allowed to go off and live his own life.
His issues with Nancy come from the belief that he is not allowed to be his own person, follow his own wants. His identity lies in being close to Will and he must prioritize that over everything, even if it means sacrificing his relationship with Nancy - his own wants. But the distance from Will comes from a failure to balance who he is in that same identity crisis. Season 4 is him struggling to find a balance in that pendulum swing. Choosing Will enough to hurt his relationship with Nancy but spending enough time alone to hurt his relationship with Will. He doesn't know who he is and he's trying to figure it out, but he's not ready to let go either. That is what we see of him in season 4.
What he needs to learn for his happy ending is that he is allowed to be his own person and have his own wants, figure out who that is and what those are, and follow them, even if they're far away. Feel that Will is safe in someone else's arms, not be a helicopter parent, and live his own life. He's a teenager. He's a teenager who's built his whole future around being a parent - something he's not. He needs to give himself permission to live his own life and follow what he actually wants, which is going to college and being with Nancy.
One last thing, I think this is also one of the reasons this is the first season we don't see him doing photography. I mentioned he doesn't really have hobbies, he does - he has, but he's not participating in them. Photography is a big part of his identity. And the lack of it also shows the lack of connection to that self he's struggling with in season 4. Photography is his own, not in proximity to Will, and he's struggling with how much of any of that - things that aren't Will - to include in his life right now. Even in the time he spends away from Will, he doesn't spend it committing to being himself. He spends it non-committally killing time, not even committing to his desired career because he's starting to sacrifice that too. His sense of self.
