Play The Game of Love (Let Our Heart Decide) 🎲 ❤️ - #BylerEndgame + D&D
On the surface, Mike and El's relationship plays like love and longing. But with a closer look at the scenes surrounding these moments, the show is already telling a different story. It frames the two lovebirds' devotion not as romance, but as grief, stasis, and a refusal to move forward, a pattern that becomes clearer with every passing season.
The Status Quo Of Mil*ven & Self-Sabotage
In Season 2, while Eleven was away and separated from Mike, he was constantly gushing about her, from her powers to the weight of losing her. Many take this as him being love lorn.
Above is an example in S2E1 where he’s counting the days since she’s been missing, saying, “It’s day 352.” Just like El counts the days in her love letter in S4E1, “Today is day 185.” Cute, right? Not really, once you put it all into context.
Mike had just been scolded by his parents for sabotaging himself at school because El was gone. Right before that, Ted says, “So your friend jumps off a cliff, you’re gonna jump too,” and Karen follows with, “We know you had a hard year, Michael,” nearly 352 days after El’s disappearance. The cliff-jumping metaphor points back to El’s sacrifice and the weight of coping with loss. So when Mike calls out to her on the radio despite his parents’ warning and their push for him to move on, symbolized through donating the toys he and El shared, he’s actively refusing to move forward, stuck in a coping mechanism of stasis.
After El reads her letter in voiceover, she never mentions Mike again in that episode. Instead, she’s consumed by the loss of her father. Her actions don’t match the love letter’s promises about seeing Mike again; she’s busy building a memorial presentation, not thinking about their relationship. While she’s lying to Mike, her mind is really on her dad. The letter becomes another act of self-sabotage, a way of ignoring her own needs, mirroring the “refusal of the call” or the urge to maintain the status quo that defines their relationship.
Then while they’re long distance in S4E1, not once does Mike mention El while he’s in Hawkins. The one time she comes up, when Ted sarcastically says “sweetie pie,” Mike pulls this face:
Screenplay excerpt from a mil*ven kiss in S3EP1.
Our Heroes' Journeys, Byler and Growth
El’s biggest action is creating a presentation on Hopper. Mike’s biggest action? Finishing a D&D campaign, the game that twice saved Will’s life and that they promised to play when they'll reunite. Their overarching emotional threads are reflected in these figurines, their idols.
The top photo shows a crushed figurine of Hopper, evoking his loss. In the second photo, Mike has just failed to protect his party member. Later in the series finale, their heart to hearts mirror the foreshadowing in these figurines, with Will positioned as the party member in question.
To summarize, the writing of the show tells us, even jokes about, how Mike and El ignoring their realities to stay together is harmful to their characters. But whenever Mike focuses on his D&D campaigns rather than his relationship with El, that’s when he actually begins to mature. Below, we see Mike coming of age as a leader, using the game to strategize his battle plans at the plotting table.
He’s shown embracing a game that has long been tied to Will and to themes of love. Romantic examples being all through Season 3, from Will begging him to play while sorting through his feelings for Mike to the painting that culminates that arc, complete with a literal heart. The idea that D&D represents Mike and Will’s love could not be communicated more on the nose than in that painting.
Moreover, the figurine parallel in S4 suggests that when Mike is focused on D&D, he’s really focused on saving Will. He becomes the leader of the party whenever he’s around Will, who helps bring about his strengths. Then we hear El say in the S5 trailer, “This isn’t one of your campaigns,” a line that’s fundamentally at odds with Mike’s evolution. Mike and El’s happiness and development depend on breaking up and being with the people who support their journeys.
If we go by the thread of D&D charting Mike's journey of embracing his final role as the "heart" in S4 & S5, this is when #BylerEndgame first became official:
