#stanalysis

[smalltown--byler]

i swear lucas is going to be mike's robin. he's going to be the one who helps mike in his self-acceptance arc!!

[emmabirb8]

Thinking about Stan's HS character design, and like... honestly, by all accounts, he totally looks the part of the stereotypical high school bully, right? He's got the cropped short slicked back hair, the nonchalant idgaf-about-school attitude (and prob didn't put a lot of effort into his grades either), the "jock" style outfit complete with the broad shoulders and bulk you'd expect from some oafish jerk kid who steals other kids' lunch money and beats kids up after school and whatnot (and, I assume, prob put up a "tough guy" front most of the time at that age, for a handful of reasons).

But that specific design choice coupled with who we, the audience, know about Stan from watching him and falling madly in love with him throughout the span of the show and beyond is funny actually, because we know he's the complete antithesis of a bully.

Stan was the kind of teenager to stand up for and defend other kids from bullies, even if that meant getting into fights that got him suspended. He'd take the brunt of harsh words and physical blows himself to protect others from getting hurt. He'd mouth off to any teacher on a power trip who put unwarranted heat on the quiet kid in the back of the class, consequences be damned. He'd pause on the way home from school to play with a stray dog for a few minutes or help an old lady safely cross the street. He'd kiss his mother on the cheek every single night before heading to bed.

Stan is one of the ultimate gruff characters with a heart of gold to ever exist imho. And I'm not sure if this was intentional or not, but his design, esp during his teenage years, fits perfectly into the whole "not what he seems" idea that becomes such an integral aspect of him overall.

I just think that's such a neat detail about him!

[callipraxia]

It’s pretty clear Stan is closer to Mabel than Dipper. They have more tender moments, he teases her less, and they have more in common. Stan definitely loves them both dearly, it might just be a case of finding it harder to relate to Dipper. Because while Stan and Dipper share a stubbornness and a commitment to their twin, they share relatively little else. But I wonder if you thought there might be more to that?

If it’s not just because Mabel is more like him, but that Dipper is more like Ford and there’s some lingering thoughts and feelings under the surface that make it harder for him to connect to him. Perhaps some underlying issues that Dipper might end up like Ford, or a subconscious frustration towards his brother.

It could simply be he finds it harder to connect to Dipper because Stan’s now much older, might have an old man’s opinions about how boys should act because his own childhood was a lifetime ago and he’s forgotten what it used to be like.

Or maybe it’s because Stan’s doing his best to keep his family out of danger but Dipper is the inquisitive adventurer, and actively seeks out the mysterious that put them at risk.

This touches on one of the reasons why I briefly considered doing a take on the Relativity Falls concept: I haven't read many fics, but all the art I've seen for it seems to substitute the characters without accounting for the fact that Mabel is a girl whereas both of the 'original' first set of twins were boys. There are very few historical absolutes, of course (you get powerful, educated women even in history's most misogynistic eras), but if Mabel had been born in the early 1950s instead of Stan, the odds are excellent that the world would have treated her very, very differently than it did Stan, and that she'd have had a very different set of problems to contend with.

From what we see of Stan's childhood, he was under pressure, from an early age, to tone down the softer aspects of his personality: to be tougher, to be more stoic, etc., and that if he simply had to express emotion, he should do so through aggression. It's pretty striking to contrast the short in Lost Legends to the scenes leading up to the falling out in ATOTS: Little Stan could admit that what bothered him was his perception that Filbrick just didn't like him and how he wished he could get Filbrick to act as though he did for once, but by the time they're teenagers...During the first scene where they discuss the prospect of Ford going to college, Stan cannot admit any of the complicated feelings (fear of abandonment, how what the principal said would have to hurt even if you were used to it, maybe even anger that Ford seemingly had no problem with the idea of walking away from him whereas he was freaking out over the mere suggestion, etc.) he's having, so he just makes fun of Ford for sounding like a nerd robot. Ford seems to be at least dimly aware of what Stan might really be thinking, but the best he can do is say that Stan had better visit him in California. To Ford, that was probably a reassurance: don't worry about it, it's all good, I still want you in my life even if I'm not doing the same thing you're doing - because we already do some different things, right? To Stan, however, it was nowhere near enough. To him, the word visit just means: you don't need me; I am unnecessary, just like Dad always said. But he can't admit he needs to feel needed and doesn't even know who he is in a world where Ford is a completely separate person from him and they aren't just the collective "Pines twins." He can talk to inanimate objects, but not people - something mirrored by his behavior in the show proper, where he has no problem talking to Ford's super-secret nerd diaries during season 2, but cannot communicate at all with the real deal, who is a stranger who happens to look exactly like him but who doesn't act like he expected Ford to act. And in the finale, it's right after Ford apologizes to and accepts a hug from McGucket (ie, did the exact things Stan wanted him to do when they first saw each other again) that Stan snaps that it's good to see him, too, and only a very little bit later that Stan flips his lid without a care in the world for the bigger picture. From his point of view, people just stuck legs on his house/business just so they could all sally off and risk their lives - in his case, again - to rescue Ford...and Ford appreciates Dipper and Mabel, and he appreciates Old Man McGucket, who looks like the personification of bad grammar, but the only time Ford even acknowledges Stan's presence voluntarily, it's to criticize him. And by this point, Stan has internalized the Filbrick Code to some degree, as shown by his treatment of Dipper in "Dreamscaperers" and how he snapped that he no longer considered Ford family at the end of ATOTS: you toughen up, because if someone hurts you, the only way to handle that situation is to hurt them back, preferably more than they hurt you. This wouldn't have been exactly the moment to discuss his real feelings about the issue anyway, what with the whole active threat to the fabric of reality problem they had going on, but Stan isn't that great at repressing strong emotions until it's a more appropriate time to deal with them in general, and the only emotions Filbrick seems to have felt comfortable expressing were anger and contempt, and while Stan does have a slightly broader emotional range than Filbrick, Stan has also learned to channel a lot of every and anything else he has going on into one of those two emotions, too. Then you add in Stan's difficulty with emotional regulation, how he cannot just put it aside and deal with it later, and you get a sudden explosion.

Contrast Mabel. It's never really pointed out, but while Dipper’s having all these issues with whether or not he is manly enough all summer, his sister’s arguably already closer to the standard than he is. Mabel is loud to the point of dominating the room; Mabel is assertive and confident; Mabel even may have a bit more of a natural inclination toward violence than Dipper does. A Mabel born in the fifties would have probably been something like Stan in the looking-glass house: put under intense pressure from an early age to stop acting like herself in several key ways, but from the opposite direction. The world would have told Mabel to shut up, to not just see what she wants and boldly stride forward to get it, and to want very different things than she really does. It’s also unlikely she would have still really expected to stick with Dipper forever the way Stan seems to have really expected to do with Ford, because while she might run an out-of-home business for some extra money like Caryn did, the expectation would have been that Dipper would go Do Something With His Life while she stayed in Glass Shard Beach and got married; if they were still joined at the hip as teenagers, their parents would probably have been Concerned about that and trying to discourage it well before scholarships became an issue. All of this, of course, could have led to the same emotionally repressed pressure-cooker kind of situation that the Stans eventually found themselves in, but even if Mabel had broken Dipper’s science fair project, the outcome would have probably been different. It would’ve been less likely for her to get kicked out, and more likely for home life to just become far, far worse until she married the first person who’d have her in order to escape, or at least ran away of (mostly) her own free will instead of because the family had disowned her. If she had still gotten kicked out, though, it might well have been harder for her to find workable options than it was for Stan – which is definitely saying something - unless, of course, it was easier for her to do so, because Mabel's not naturally inclined to scammery and thus could have ended up tied down working in a sewing plant for ten years instead of roaming the country at all. And, of course, the only way she could have used Dipper's reputation as "that mysterious science guy who lives in the woods" to her advantage after his disappearance would have involved dressing in drag for thirty years – or longer, even, since unless she was already dressing as a man, she wouldn’t have been mistaken for Dipper by chance, which meant she’d have had to think up the idea of stealing his identity and creating the Shack on her own instead of just running with it when the opportunity presented itself. Either way, very different dynamic with Dipper once he got back, I imagine, and that's before we get into all the ways Dipper isn't exactly like Ford and how that could have affected the story.

There also would have been a lot of differences in how the Stans were parented, too, most likely…but I’m drifting a bit from my point, which (I think) was that I think part of the reason Stan is able to get along better with Mabel might be in part because of the ways in which he doesn’t relate to her experience and does remember what his childhood was like. He sees a lot of Ford in Dipper, which I do think caused some subconscious Issues with resentment that even he couldn’t have articulated but which doubtless impacted their relationship, but also a lot of his younger self, as he tells Soos in the porch memory. Stan probably shares Ford’s offhand confidence that Mabel can fend for herself in the world, but he sees the potential for Dipper to end up beaten up by the world like he was, and possibly going mad because of it like he might have thought Ford did – of course, we don’t know that Stan ever thought of that, but based on the state of everything Ford left behind and his behavior on the night of their reunion, I find it…unlikely that the thought of “oh, God, not only did I go off on my brother and make him literally disappear into thin air, but this happened because I went off on him when the reason he was acting so weird was because he’d had a mental breakdown” never crossed Stan’s mind over all those years. Which…I’ll just quote myself from the Ford Essay:

The matter is more complex than [previous paragraph, not relevant here] in this case, however, due to the show's setting and the 'rules' which dictate how that setting 'works'. Bill and Ford’s relationship exists in the context of Gravity Falls, which takes place in a world where complex and especially disturbing ideas are often partially diluted through the filters of symbolism and substitution, as is done with the show's recurring theme of substance abuse metaphors. The portrayal of the relationship between Bill and Ford is mostly devoid of humor anyway, but if Bill was truly another man, or even much closer to humanoid, then what little there is due to his status as an over-the-top, magic-wielding triangle-thing would vanish. Since he is a magical, over-the-top triangle-thing, though, the only time that Bill is, for instance, visibly physically abusive toward Ford in something like the normal sense of the term is during the torture session in “Weirdmageddon III: Take Back the Falls," and even then, the fact that humans can’t electrocute each other simply by willing it takes at least some of the realism, and therefore at least some of the horror, off the edge of the situation. Before Weirdmageddon, though, Bill only appears in his own person as an incorporeal dream demon. Before that, he could only inflict physical harm on others by gaining control of the victim's body, all while his eyes appear in that person’s face to simultaneously remind the audience that the victim is not actually the one inflicting the damage. We find ourselves, therefore, in an ambivalent situation: clearly, Bill is engaging in physical abuse, but should we regard Bill another entity in the usual sense, as one independent actor who is choosing to abuse another independent actor, or is he better understood as a symbolic representation of some mental illness that might inspire Ford and Dipper both to self-harm? The answer is more or less ‘both,’ which means it can be passed off as ‘neither’ well enough to – just, and probably only in combination with Bill’s cartoonish, neon-sign appearance – avoid the censors.

I’ve previously written another mini-essay about how the first time I read the Journal, I assumed “coffee” was a euphemism for “meth, cocaine, or both,” not least because of how similar Ford’s behavior was to someone whose stimulant addiction had careened into at least temporary psychosis. Stan had some inkling of Weird Stuff being real even before he came to GF if we accept Lost Legends as canon, and he learned a great deal more pretty quickly, but given the kind of life he’d been leading before he got to town…I imagine the question had to cross his mind at some point. If it did, then that probably made him feel ten times worse than he already did about the situation, and probably about as much more worried about what would happen if Dipper didn’t learn that the only way for a man to make it through in the world was to be tougher than everyone else, to always be the person in the room who could hit the hardest and sublimate other emotions into aggression the most easily.

Another thing about his relationship with Dipper that I…think I might have first thought of in a long-ago comment thread with Theory. One of my very favorite episodes of the show is “Little Gift Shop of Horrors,” because it’s basically a twenty-one minute powerpoint on Stan’s psychology. On the surface of it, it looks like “Abaconings” is supposed to star Mabel as a stand-in for Stan himself and Dipper as a stand-in for Ford…but in the story, the character who actually abandons Mabel to pursue genius is Waddles, not Dipper. Dipper is the person who takes her place in Waddles’ life, not the person who leaves her life. What’s the closest thing anyone ever got to taking Stan’s place in Ford’s life? McGucket. Of course, at that point, Stan probably didn’t know that the person he’d have felt discarded in favor of was McGucket, but since the layout of the episodes means the showrunners had probably already decided that the Journal included references to Ford having a friend outside the family, then this means Stan had already read about it after copying J3 while Waddles was in the room. If he put together that the mysterious “F” was McGucket at some point, then he’s even more jealous of Fiddleford in the Weirdmageddon scene than my ramble about that scene already has him being. So…well, this is highly conjectural, since the Journal wasn’t published until after the episode had aired, but if Stan was on some level equating Dipper with “F”, then yikes, does he ever have messy feelings he doesn’t know how to deal with about the boy.

Then we go back to Mabel. Mabel is a girl, so it’s okay to be somewhat affectionate with her – the expectations for her are totally different, showing affection to women is permissible, and what does he know about how to teach someone how to be a woman? Zilch, nada, nothing. This means he can just interact with her without much of an agenda other than “make child like me so I am less lonely” while with Dipper, he’s still got the agenda of “make child like me so I am less lonely,” but it’s also muddled up with “turn child who reminds me of both me and my brother in ways that scare me into a Proper Man so the world doesn’t hurt him, because after I toughened up, it certainly never hurt me again, nope, I’m a very psychologically well-adjusted person” and also his feelings about smart people and how they screw everything up. And then, on top of all that, Dipper is, as you point out, the adventurer, the one who usually leads them into the trouble Stan’s constantly worried about them walking into. Last time someone he loved knew how weird this place was, look how that ended; definitely not something that would dispose him kindly toward Dipper’s refusal to ignore how weird the town was. He’s also a constant threat to Stan’s ongoing Project, sticking his nose into things at every occasion, even being willing to talk to a fed! Mabel is straightforward, Mabel is uncomplicated: Mabel acts like a child who poses no threat to him and brings back no ghosts he’d rather forget, like the kind of child Stan was, more or less, when his relationship with Ford worked, and is perfectly happy to engage in entirely harmless childish pursuits like making bad art, watching the television, and playing with water balloons with him. Dipper does some of this as well, but also has all that other baggage attached. This could put him on a constant emotional see-saw where Dipper is concerned, generally much to Dipper’s detriment. This also makes Dipper a constant challenge to his ‘need to be needed’ – as he says in “Stanchurian Candidate,” he wanted the twins to regard him as a hero even more than he wanted everyone else to do so, and Dipper is both highly independent already and then immediately latches onto Ford, which from Stan’s point of view might have been akin to them both announcing that Stan just wasn’t a necessary person and that they might be better off without him. To quote myself again, from a comment reply to user underground_lurker:

Just to survive as a young adult, Stan also had to pretty much develop a moral code that allowed for harming (identity theft isn't violent, but it's still definitely a form of harm) basically everyone he came into contact with - except for the tiny group he defined as "my family," which served as a motivator to do whatever else he needed to do, no matter how difficult or distasteful he might find it. He couldn't believe in or care enough about himself to push himself when the going got tough...but the Ford in his head, the one I think he was addressing when he talked to Journal One in "Scaryoke" and probably for a long time before it, that guy was worth doing something for. Then, when Real Ford epically disappointed him after his return, Dipper and Mabel - both them and his ideas of them - were still worth doing something for. That's why I think he was able to so casually dismiss the impending death of his own personality during the finale as "eh, not like I was doing much with this space anyway." Mental Ford had been replaced by Real Ford, who didn't even want rescuing and who talked back and thought of things to say that Stan never could have predicted, and either the summer or the world was about to end, which meant the twins didn't/soon wouldn't need him anymore, either. Aside, of course, from the extent to which Dipper had already established that he no longer needed Stan anyway, what with Stan realizing he'd badly mishandled Dipper after "Dreamscaperers" and Dipper being the town mystery solver after "Society of the Blind Eye" and Real Ford being in the picture after "Not What He Seems" and all. So why would he care that his mind was on fire? There was no one left who mattered to him to do anything for, which, for him, meant his existence was at best pointless and at worst actually detrimental to the world ("Dad was right about me, I really am a screw-up").

There’s nothing straightforward and uncomplicated at all in the relationship with Dipper, and thus, Stan repeatedly bungles said relationship, which leads to half the events of “Dreamscaperers” and the massive buildup of tension until almost the very last moment of NWHS and creates several layers of the show’s emotional complexity, I think. Also, note to self, add MBB to the list of people to copiously thank in the acknowledgments when/if I ever get the Stan Essay done.

[never-shuts-up]

So I heard a rumor that Jason Jordan was going to tag team with Seth Rollins at house shows, and I gotta say, I don’t hate it.

Actually, I really like it. 

Jason Jordan, the Boss’s Kid, who has a million things to prove and will fight anyone and anything up to and including the sun to prove he’s worthy of his father’s approval. He appears to be the polar opposite of the newly minted heel!Seth when he was just starting out, but their motivations are cut from the same cloth (insecurity, a relentless desire to please and be praised), and so is the predicament they find themselves in. So Jason is alienating the entire rest of the roster, not by proving himself through chickenshit-corporate-heel evil but by being aggressively, obnoxiously good and throwing himself into harm’s way again and again with the mindset that failure will mean he loses everything important, and Seth just knows from watching him that it’s gonna get real ugly for this kid real quick, because he’s been there. He’s been The Golden Boy, and he knows it ain’t all it’s cracked up to be.

So when Jason tries to come out and hijack his match with Joe, Seth doesn’t just tell him to get the fuck out of here because he doesn’t see an annoying brat who needs to shut up and get out of the way, he sees an ambitious, motivated, and on-some-level-terrified young man who has a ton of potential but is putting himself on a trajectory that could put his entire future in danger, and is in a position where he could do things he’ll regret forever, just for a father-figure or authority-figure’s approval (which Seth learned is not the reward he had initially hoped and that once obtained, it can be revoked just as easily). So Seth tries to reason with him, and talk him down, to convince him he doesn’t really want this, and doesn’t give up until Jason attacks him first.

Their match earns Jason a level of respect for his in-ring ability, which carries over to the tag team match later on in the show, because Seth does not turn on him for meddling, taking the tag prematurely, and going out of his way to target Joe whether or not he’s the legal competitor. And regardless of how awful the outcome of the match feels, Seth knows it is in no way, shape, or form Jason’s fault.

So yes, I can see him taking Jason under his wing, not fighting his battles for him but definitely sticking up for him as a solid competitor and a decent kid, even though he wants to slap the dumb out of him from time to time. He’s not bringing Jordan into the Shield, he’s acting AS his shield, if you will, while he gets his head on straight and establishes himself to a point where he can stop getting on everybody’s nerves with his daddy issues and relentless interfering, putting on a few good tag matches with him until he finds an angle (har) that isn’t I’m The Boss’s Kid. Because there can be so much more to his career than being The Boss’s Kid, than being the Golden Boy, and as Seth knows from bitter experience, either of those is a shaky foundation to build yourself on.

(What kills me is, even Up Up Down Down set up for this, with Seth meeting his match at Madden in the form of a totally unexpected Jason victory. I like to think that there’s a level of mutual respect from that too, even if they give each other shit about it forever, like brothers are inclined to do.)

[allieinarden]

Hi. I just wanted to say i love your Dipper and Mabel analysis's. I love how you write about their flaws and strengths. I was wondering if you'll ever do an analysis for Stanford and Stanley or if there were one you would recommend for me to look at?

Happy Easter, waj13 (if you celebrate that is), and THANK YOU for giving me this lovely message to return to!!

Here’s some Stanalysis I did a while back.

I had also been thinking, when I wrote this post last week, of adding some thoughts on the Stans for purposes of comparison, but that post ran on pretty long as it was. In short, though, some of my best evidence for reading Dipper and Mabel’s relationship as healthy and positive is the way it’s contrasted with the relationship between the Stans, who do, I tend to think, have some problems with codependency because of Stan’s extremely low self-esteem. I see them as Mabel and Dipper if they were raised in a less positive environment; their father’s is a school of hard knocks not leavened by much sympathy, their mother is described as a “pathological liar,” and Stan specifically mentions that the bullies who said they wouldn’t make any other friends were right. So the two of them come to rely exclusively on each other, and when Ford tries to go in another direction Stan can’t take it (keep in mind that at this point they were about 17 or 18, college-aged–it’s a different situation entirely from 13-year-old Mabel’s fear of attending high school without her brother by her side). This is why Ford asks Dipper if his relationship with Mabel isn’t “suffocating”–he’s projecting himself so strongly onto this smart, eager kid that all he can see is his own past, and his instinct is to get the kid out while there’s still time. He doesn’t realize what the show reveals, which is that Dipper and Mabel can bounce back from the worst of situations, that they can forgive each other, that Mabel is ultimately willing to allow Dipper his freedom. I think that Dipper and Mabel are different in part because they were raised in a stabler environment, so their dependence on each other never took on that morbid dimension–there’s no issue of one holding the other back.

[smalltown--byler]

miwi having socks that matched their assigned colour (i.e., will being yellow and mike being blue) but then somewhere along the line swapping as their identities became inextricably tied to each other, inseparable, impossible to tell where one ended and the other began

[smalltown--byler]

Just thinking about how awful Mike's ending is. The problem isn't even that it's sad/tragic - it's that it literally doesn't function as a proper ending. In a well-written narrative, characters change: conflicts are introduced, tested, and meaningfully resolved. Characters don't need to get a happy ending, but they do need closure and for something to shift. Mike doesn't get that.

From the beginning of the show, one of Mike’s defining struggles has been his inability to articulate his emotions. When things become overwhelming, he shuts down and withdraws. He avoids vulnerability because it risks loss and pain. This is set up early and repeatedly reinforced - it's a fundamental conflict. Good writing demands that a core conflict be answered by the end.

But Stranger Things never answers it!!! Instead of allowing Mike to confront this fear and grow beyond it, the narrative leaves him frozen in place. He doesn't fulfil his Mike the Brave persona and confront hard emotional truths. He doesn't choose vulnerability and openness. And because the story ends without resolving that struggle, Mike's arc totally stagnates.

What really fucks me up is what this stagnation implies for Mike's future. It creates mirroring between Mike's trajectory and that of his dad: emotionally checked out, passive, and unable to engage deeply with the people he loves. By not writing in growth for Mike, he's left moving towards the same suffocating adulthood.

It's so funny to me that this failure exists regardless of whether you ship Byler or Mileven - the Duffers wrote Mike's arc so poorly that it pissed off both sides! From a Mileven perspective, Mike is still unable to tell El he loves her despite her being literally about to die. From a Byler perspective, Mike can't confront his queerness and express his true feelings for Will, leaving him stuck in the closet. In both cases, fear wins and Mike avoids the vulnerability that honesty would require. His defining conflict remains intact: when faced with emotional truth, he closes himself off.

This isn't an arc - it's a loop!!! He ends up in the same place he started instead of growing!

That's why his ending is so painful. Mike expresses his deepest fear: "I don't want to have any more regrets". A well-constructed story would treat this line as set-up for future payoff, where Mike overcomes his emotional repression to ensure that he doesn't have anything to regret. But instead, the Duffers made this line a literal playbook - Mike's ending is nothing BUT regret. Regret for what he couldn't say, couldn't face, couldn't be brave enough to confront.

That's not meaningful tragedy - it's just unresolved writing! And it makes my heart ache for Mike Wheeler's potential - not because he suffers, but because the story never even gave him the chance to become somebody who wouldn't have to.

[smalltown--byler]

Why the Duffers Erased the Wonder Twins' Bond in S5

In dishonour of it being one month since that fuckass finale, it's time to discuss one of the most telling - and absolutely infuriating - choices in Season 5: the deliberate erasure of Will and El's bond. Yes, deliberate. Because acknowledging it would have fundamentally disrupted the show's insistence on framing El's character as part of a singular, all-consuming heterosexual romance.

The scene that really highlights this problem is when Will consoles Mike in the Abyss by telling him "Don't worry. El's been training for this". This line tells us that Mike is worried for El, once again reduces Will to Mike's emotional support system and relationship counsellor, and most egregiously completely ignores that Will should also be beside himself with fear for his sister.

El isn't just Mike's girlfriend. She's Will's sister. They share a special bond forged through their unique ability to understand each other's trauma and their shared experience of feeling othered by the world around them. The show placing Will in the role of calm comforter for Mike - instead of allowing him to express his own anxiety - is a deliberate decision that actively suppresses Will and El's relationship in favour of pushing the Mileven narrative. It's Mike's concern that we're being directed to acknowledge and care about.

This suppression becomes even more glaring in the epilogue. We see Will living in the cabin where El used to live, presumably sleeping in her room. We see him take a graduation photo with Hopper - El's father who is now his step-dad. He is surrounded by reminders of El everywhere he goes. And yet, we don't see Will struggling with any of it. He doesn't falter under the weight of occupying his dead sister's space.

Meanwhile, the show makes plenty of time for Mike's grief. We see him sit at El's memorial. We watch him grapple with whether he can attend the graduation. We get an extended conversation where Hopper comforts Mike over his grief, despite Hopper being Will's step-dad, and Will, who would also be grieving his sister, is nowhere in that exchange. Mike's pain is foregrounded, lingered on, and treated as narratively essential.

Will's is not.

This is because Will's grief would pose competition. Showing Will mourning El as his sister would require the show to acknowledge that El existed within a network of relationships that extended beyond romantic heterosexuality. It would fracture the illusion that her life was primarily an epic love story with Mike.

El dies before Will can say goodbye, and the show refuses to show us the aftermath of that loss. Not because Will wouldn't grieve - we absolutely know he would, El was his sister - but because his grief doesn't serve the story the Duffers want to tell.

That’s also why El is given the wildly uncharacteristic line that Mike was the only one who understood her. It’s narratively false. S4 goes out of its way to show us the opposite: their entire arc is built on mutual misunderstanding. El makes Mike feel small and insecure, and Mike makes El feel ashamed and monstrous. Other characters understand El in ways Mike never quite does. Will understands what it's like to feel constantly othered in a world that is hostile to you for reasons that were never under your control. Kali understands the trauma of being made into a weapon. Max understands her need to connect to girlhood and find a sense of independence outside of the abuse and control of others. But to acknowledge that would dilute the romantic exceptionalism the show is desperate to maintain. So it insists on Mike's unique understanding even when the text itself keeps contradicting it.

By narrowing El's death to its impact on Mike alone, the show pushes the idea of an all-consuming love story - but only by erasing the understanding, connection, and grief of everyone else who loved her. In doing so, El's humanity is dissolved. She stops existing as a full person with multiple meaningful relationships and instead becomes merely a girlfriend whose narrative purpose is to be mourned by one perfectly heterosexual boy.

In her final moments, El is flattened into Mike's girlfriend. Her relationships with everyone else are quietly discarded. Will's grief disappears because showing it would threaten the show's insistence on framing her death as a tragedy for Mike, for heterosexual love.

This is a systemic failure of the show. The writers were so afraid of destabilising its flagship couple - so unwilling to imagine El not needing a man, or Mike existing outside of compulsory heterosexuality - that they imploded nearly every other relationship in its wake. Will and Mike barely feel like friends after Vol 1. El barely reacts to Max being alive despite loving her so much she managed to bring her back to life. We don't see Max grieve El at all. The parallels between El and Will which show how deeply intertwined they are get dropped entirely, precisely so the show doesn't have to confront Will losing his beloved sister.

By the end, El is Mike's girlfriend. Mike is El's boyfriend. And that is the only relationship the narrative allows to matter - despite the fact that this relationship is, by the show's own evidence, less healthy, less reciprocal, and less understanding than many of the connections that El and Mike share with others. Everything else - siblinghood, female friendship, queer love and reckoning with internalised homophobia - is treated as expendable. It becomes collateral damage in service of preserving a marketable, uncomplicated heterosexual endgame, even when that endgame contradicts the emotional truths the story itself has spent five seasons establishing.