“Hmmm… of the core four, why don’t we make two of them really good boyfriends and give them nice sweet relationships with girls, and then one of them has a girlfriend but he FUMBLES constantly and reminds her of her ABUSER and tells her there’s something WRONG with her and he can’t say he LOVES her, and then maybe we’ll just make him really close with his best friend who’s gay and in love with him but the gay friend gets REJECTED because the boy is STRAIGHT and in love with the GIRL that he can’t say I LOVE YOU to. That’s a compelling plot.”
I didn't start shipping Byler because I picked up on a few moments of chemistry and decided they'd make a cute couple -- I started off by absolutely refusing to entertain said moments as reciprocally queer until I ran into the ridiculous homophobia on the ST subreddit and decided to review Mike's character arc out of sheer gay spite.
Let me clarify: Spite isn't what made me change my mind about Mike. Spite just made me read a few Byler analyses and rewatch the show with an open mind because I didn't want to be like those pricks who would insult and censor queer fans for... [checks notes]... thinking something gay might happen in a TV show with gay people in it. I truly wasn't expecting a queer interpretation to fit Mike's arc anywhere near as well as the default interpretation -- but by the time I'd finished my rewatch, I was reeling from how much better it fit.
Cause that's the thing: Mike's queerness is pretty obvious once you look for it. The difficulty is in giving yourself permission to look.
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A question Bylers are often asked is "why would the show spend four seasons building up Milevn just to tear it down at the last minute for some unrealistic woke ship? Mike literally said he loves El!" And yeah, Mike's grand love confession at the end of S4 certainly seems like a triumphant pay-off to all that build-up... but I have a few questions of my own.
Firstly: why establish in no uncertain terms that feeling loved is the key to unlocking El's fullest potential against Vecna--
--only to undermine the power of Mike's longed-for confession by having it only be good enough to delay Vecna instead of defeat him? Yes, it's the penultimate season -- so why did Milevn's pay-off happen here instead of S5 where it could properly shine?
Secondly: why couldn't Milevn fix their relationship by themselves? Even if you believe that El commissioned the painting (she didn't) and that the feelings Will describes are truly hers (they aren't), it was still Will who had to perform this romantic gesture on her behalf, and it broke his heart to do so. Why hand this important work off to a third party? Why weave queer tragedy into the build-up towards a heterosexual pay-off that's supposed to feel triumphantly romantic?
Speaking of which: why undermine the intimacy of this scene by having Will hover behind Mike's shoulder the whole time? Couldn't they have asked Noah to take a few steps to the left for the sake of a better shot? Couldn't they have waited until after Milevn's big romantic moment to remind us for the millionth fucking time how sad Will is about it?
In my opinion, this scene and its four seasons of build-up make much more sense if you read them as three entwined character arcs about the trials of growing up in a suffocatingly heteronormative era: the gay kid who doesn't think he's entitled to a happy ending; the abused girl who thinks shallow romance with the first boy who's nice to her will make her feel normal; and the confused hero who hasn't figured out the solution yet.
For all the insistence that this show has to stick to "realistic" depictions of 80s queerness... it's hardly a realistic depiction of 80s straightness for Mike to score an awesome magical girlfriend, either. That's just nerdy wish-fulfillment, and common only as a trope in fiction.
So it's not unreasonable to suppose that Mike's true role in the Subverting 80s Tropes Show might be to represent the actually very realistic 80s experience of getting swept up in compulsory heterosexuality.
Think about it: Will's vulnerability to the horrors functions as a metaphor for being visibly gay in a world that despises gay people--
--whereas Mike's girlfriend quite literally has the power to protect him from monsters and homophobic bullies alike.
This doesn't mean Mike is callously using El, though. He learned the hard way in S1 that treating an innocent girl like a means to an end would only end up destroying her, and the guilt and fear of hurting her again has been weighing heavy on him ever since.
Comphet isn't about taking advantage of other people's feelings so you can pretend to be straight -- it's about deluding yourself into believing you're straight because queerness isn't an option you're allowed to consider.
Mike genuinely does love El and he genuinely does want to be an important part of her life -- so surely that means he wants to be her boyfriend, right? Twelve is perhaps a little young to know that yet... but surely there's gotta be something here that sets his feelings apart from how a friend or brother would feel?
Surely the reason he later finds himself struggling to say to her face that he loves her is because he's just an immature loser who needs to try harder to grow up and be the man this girl he adores deserves to have...?
...and certainly not because the guilt and fear of losing her just keeps piling up as the romantic instincts he thinks he's been waiting to grow into turn out to be developing at exactly the pace they're supposed to -- in the wrong direction.
That would be ridiculous. Will's his best friend. Yes, he loves him and can't bear to be without him, but that doesn't mean anything. Why can't a guy display a little unhinged devotion to his special friend without it having to mean something romantic?
Why can't he, indeed.
At his core, Mike is someone who desperately wants to be as special as the straight heroes in the nerdy media he loves. But there isn't anything inherently heroic about being some lame middle-class white nerd who's bad with girls, so he believes that the best he can do is to be a dutiful sidekick who would sacrifice himself in a heartbeat for people he perceives as more special than himself.
For all the "build-up" Mike's romance with El has enjoyed across four seasons, it's done absolutely nothing to help him grow as a character and overcome this self-worth problem.
So is it really any surprise that even after realizing El would be fine and still want to be friends with him if he told her the truth, and even after realizing just how good Will is at understanding his insecurities and reassuring him of his inherent worth--
--Mike would still sacrifice his chance at happiness for the sake of the greater good?
El was literally dying in his arms. How could queer desire possibly be as important as this girl who needed him to be a man and do his damn job so she could do hers?
I'm interpreting Mike as gay here, but I think it's important to note that this principle applies even if he's bi or straight -- Mike can be attracted to girls and still be forcing himself to stay in a relationship with a girl he's not a good romantic match for because that's just what he thinks he's supposed to do.
His sister had a similar problem: Nancy was legitimately attracted to Steve, but her infatuation with him was more about doing what cool teen girls are supposed do than about authentic connection. And because this is a horror story as much a coming-of-age story, Wheeler's conformity had horrendous consequences -- her critical-of-comphet bestie was killed by the horrors.
Which sounds familiar, doesn't it?
(Sure, Max technically didn't die -- but she still died enough for Vecna's plan to come to fruition. Which just brings us back to my first question: why couldn't the Power of Heterosexual Love prevent this? In the same season that said "forced conforming is what's killing the kids", no less?)
Will describes Vecna as an inevitability that won't stop until he's taken everyone -- which in my opinion is the same defeatist attitude demanded by comphet.
It's not that Mr. Refuses-To-Participate-In-Society's-Silly-Play symbolizes comphet itself, per se; rather, he represents the despair of feeling like you can't truly escape it. But either way, this means that the solution to defeating Vecna is the same solution to defeating comphet:
Giving yourself permission to look and see that your true self is far more valuable than whatever you think you're supposed to be.
just find it funny that will continues to stare at mike, while el barely looks at him despite being the one he initially addressed.
who actually has a crush on mike impossible challenge go
but in all seriousness, i've been thinking about what noah said recently about him having to do very subtle and masked acting in season 3 in terms of will's feelings for mike, and this scene popped in my head. like, not only have they been doing the "mike and el can't have a moment alone without will loitering in the background (in focus, too)" theme since the snowball, but they've also been exhibiting the duality of will and el's actions when mike isn't looking.
that last image above is extremely telling to me. el doesn't look back once mike looks away, proving she wasn't just putting on a nonchalant act until he couldn't see her anymore. meanwhile, will just always has his eyes on mike, and this is one of the few examples we have of will pining in the open (something we mainly see in season 4 when he's more sure of his feelings, and mayyyyybe even hopeful of reciprocation.) the more i think about it as i'm writing this out, i actually think this is the first shot we have of will watching mike in a sort of (obviously masked) yearning nature(?)
