y'all fell for the will byers propaganda by the duffers and it shows.
lucas was mike's best friend. lucas was the one he couldn't live without. when eleven hurt lucas mike lost his mind. lucas was the one calling out the issues they were having and willing to go to the gate by himself. not mike. lucas risked the most for will that first season. not mike.
the duffers literally had to introduce a new character and force lucas away from mike in season 2 in order to make will have relevance. then they had to make the two boys "girl crazy" so their bond in season 3 couldn't be read queer. and then had to force them apart again in season 4 while they were already fighting, and place mike and will in their own curtained off area so when lucas went through his shit he wouldn't have mike and mike and him wouldn't get past their BS and lucas' focus wouldn't be split.
we can't have a black boy have his own character, his own issues, his own storylines, be central and also be more diverse than just black. whoa. what do you think this is? meaningful work?
i'm not trying to come for people who enjoy will, or by.ler, or lu.max. i don't want to ruin your fun or your ships. but the fandom as a whole as a tendency to not only sideline lucas as a character, or use him in things but not see him as a person (i.e. he is there for other characters while having no desires/interests/traits/problems of his own), or will straight up ignore that lucas actually had a much more central place until the duffers realised his importance/centrality/chemistry and scrambled to basically... remove him from the stakes?
mike and will were not the centre of the group. they never were. mike was not will's personal knight at the beginning. he had the eleven storyline. lucas was the dogged one. the duffers had to completely alter everything in season 2. and when season 3 started to get messy and close to the original dynamics at times they had to really rattle things up in season 4.
(they actually also did a similar thing with jonathan, and destroyed joyce in the process, but that's a whole other thing)