Fell for Byler late, but fell harder

"Ronald Off the Record" on YouTube... I'm a gay lawyer in his 40s who watched s4 in Feb 2024 and am late to the Byler party. I have a LOT to say!

[teambyler]

My video "A LAWYER'S EVIDENCE that Mike and Will become a romantic pair in Stranger Things" is out!

Many of you have followed me ( @teambyler ) or read my essays analyzing Byler (I've linked some of the most-shared ones below). I am actually also a LAWYER who has a YouTube channel called RONALD OFF THE RECORD, and I just released my big video on Byler! (I also have another YouTube channel with 45K subscribers that I mention in the video)

I'm prepared to put my professional reputation as a lawyer on the line to comment on a piece of science fiction, because goddammit this is important to me! It is not "delusional" to think Will and Mike will become a couple, and there is nothing wrong with you if want it to happen! This is a video essay I've been planning for at least SIX MONTHS, and I put a lot of work into it. Please share, and please leave comments. Enjoy! =D

0:00 Why this video 1:38 Hate for Byler on the internet 10:16 Case for Mileven 15:21 Case for Byler: Starting premises 17:56 If Will were a girl… 25:30 The evidence! 29:05 EXHIBIT A: The Snow Ball 31:34 B: Mike's reactions to El and Will being upset 34:21 C: Season 3 ending montage 39:16 D: Airport reunion 47:51 E: Rink-O-Mania argument 51:28 F: Heteronormativity, audience expectations 58:25 G: Throwing away the letter 59:55 H: 2nd heart-to-heart scene 1:05:43 I: Mike can't say he loves El 1:13:27 J: Platonic reunion 1:15:12 K: Will's role convincing Mike to say "I love you" 1:20:08 L: Effect of the "love confession" on El 1:39:54 M: The Painting Lie 1:43:22 Honorable mentions 1:45:27 Non-diegetic evidence 2:01:23 Actor statements 2:07:01 Season 5 information 2:10:34 NOT how you write an unrequited love story 2:16:07 Why Byler SHOULD happen (queerbaiting, etc.) 2:28:21 A more powerful story 2:35:45 A personal note

I'm now making this my new pinned post, so I'll list a few of my posts here for people to check out.

Link to my Byler Part 2 video!

Some other @teambyler posts:

Mike was saying "I love you" to Will

Questions to ask if ever you have Byler doubt

How the Duffers have set Will up to have a happy ending in Season 5

The most heartbreaking way Byler can culminate (and how I predict it will) (I know this is less likely than an "escape from Camazotz" possession scenario, but I still want this to happen =D )

How the Duffers likely will make the general audience AWARE of Byler and CHEER for Byler

Posts defending open and free discussion of gay sexuality in Byler Tumblr:

In defense of celebrating Will's likely coming-out and sexual liberation (9/25/25)

Attacking me for proving the show portrayed Mike having sexual feelings for Will betrays LGBT+ liberation, youth sexual liberation, and the Byler fandom (11/7/25)

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Will's original motivation to come out was to build up courage to approach Mike about his feelings about him:

The show quietly REPLACES this. The reason he comes out becomes a vision from Vecna???

A vision that was OFFSCREEN?

I smell meddling.

Byler was planned, then pulled. You can't convince me otherwise.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Another thing about that Robin/Will conversation:

If Robin gave her "Tammy" speech to tell Will to give up on Mike, then, at the tower, when Will is clearly asking for Big Sister advice on asking Mike out...

... WHY does Robin never clarify what she meant?

Why give MORE encouragement and hope just HOURS after telling him to give up on Mike?

Because that WASN'T what she meant.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Mike No Homo

The fact that Mike never hugs Will during his COMING OUT SCENE (he's physically only touching Lucas and Dustin), never hugs him afterward, and it's EL who's touching Mike during this shot to serve the Mil*ven propaganda:

-teambyler

[teambyler]

You know who else doesn't hug Will when he comes out?

His MOM. Will doesn't get a hug from his MOM in his COMING OUT SCENE.

Fuckin christ.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Will's original motivation to come out was to build up courage to approach Mike about his feelings about him:

The show quietly REPLACES this. The reason he comes out becomes a vision from Vecna???

A vision that was OFFSCREEN?

I smell meddling.

Byler was planned, then pulled. You can't convince me otherwise.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Mike hearing Will say "AND US?" and defensively denying they're anything more than friends:

Meanwhile:

MAKE THIS MAKE SENSE.

Fuckin queerbait.

-teambyler

[shardlily]

And the ending also paralleled Brokeback Mountain:

[teambyler]

Well SHIT.

That second parallel

-teambyler

[tammystan]

IDGAF NUKE THE WHOLE SHOW

[teambyler]

Ha! No, the one Will bonds with about being an outsider is MIKE. "Crazy together, right?" >:(

Not only is this a retcon, but it's a retcon of the PAST. What's in Season 5 is MORE important to canon.

IDGAF about this show. No, really. And no one else should, either. In CANON after Season 5 Will and Mike's are BEST FRIENDS and Byler remains possibie.

-teambyler

[jotheegg]

am I being gaslit rn...

[teambyler]

The fact that Tales from '85 will probably rewrite history makes me interested in it even LESS, if that was even possible.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

More evidence of #BylerGate

Just wanted to highlight a couple things I found for my video on BylerGate: the theory that the writers (helmed by the Duffers) DID plan Byler up through Season 5 Volume 1 but abandoned it.

First, in this part of the video I go show this Dec. 23, 2025 interview, where Noah Schnapp tells USA Today specifically that Volume 2 goes into Will's "internal stakes" and "answers questions about why this all exists," including "the parallels between Will and Vecna" which he compares to those between "Harry Potter and Voldemort":

Of course, these things are NOT explored in the Volume 2 we see! Why did Noah tease that there would be parallels with Henry that we never see onscreen? Why would this be dropped?

Here's one possibility.. if the show was going to parallel Will with Henry, then something the show would have HAD to explore was the fateful night of November 6, 1959, the night of the school play when Henry is finally taken over by the Mind Flayer and Patty's love fails to save him from this fate:

Paralleling Will and Henry would've set-up a moment where people Will loves -- including probably MIKE -- would have succeeded where Patty failed: saving Will from the Mind Flayer with love. But once Byler was dropped, there was no point in making this parallel anymore.

Will's eventual "confrontation" with Henry in the finale -- simply pleading with Henry that he doesn't have to be evil -- ended up having zero impact, and probably was the dregs of what had originally been a much more dramatic and impactful confrontation between these two narrative foils (Will and Henry).

The next thing I got really excited about and wanted to share was Ross Duffer's EMPHATIC statement in 2022, saying that the reason the Upside Down was "frozen" to November 6, 1983 would be a "huge part of Season 5". (It's at the timestamp)

(I know the Duffers have teased many things and failed to deliver, but before anyone argues that I encourage people to watch the clip and see HOW emphatic and excited Ross sounds saying this!)

Of course, this ends up NOT getting answered in Season 5. The answer would all have placed Will more at the center at the story: Why would the Upside Down be formed on the same day Will was abducted?

If Byler was deleted, then the focus on Will -- and many of the mysteries surrounding Will, his birthday, why he was chosen -- would have necessarily had to be reduced as well.

And there are many quotes I won't repeat here -- I assume you know them -- where the Duffers were saying the season was centered on Will and that he was "the heart and soul" of Season 5... which seemed to be true in Volume 1... but not afterward.

These are gigantic holes between public statement and what's in the final product, showing that Will was originally going to have a more important role. Add to all this ALL the buildup toward Byler we saw in Season 5... ("snowball," Robin's speech, etc.)

Something's fishy, and there have to be answers.

Ross does not sound in this clip like a person who would, in the absence of outside interference, find himself still breaking the Finale script in the latter half of 2024. It seems more likely that they were made to deviate from what was once a clear plan.

To be clear, BylerGate doesn't mean the Duffers didn't SELL THEIR SOULS and execute the worst queerbait of all time once they decided to go that route. This is to try to make sense for all the things we've witnessed, including the fact that Byler DID seem to be setup as endgame.

But by marginalizing the character they themselves said would be "the heart and soul" of Season 5, they also took out "the heart and soul" of Season 5. And now they're dealing with the fall-out.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Join us in Live Chat for the premiere of #BylerGate video this Friday 4pm Pacific (GMT -8)!

An hour-long video on BylerGate! (The theory that the Stranger Things writing team, including the Duffer Brothers, planned Byler to happen, but abandoned it during the production of Season 5.)

I also talk about what we probably LOST in terms of a stronger season, because removing Byler and decentering Will had profound ripple effects on the 2nd half of Season 5.

0:00 Intro 4:54 Differences from other theories 8:05 Buildup of Byler and its disappearance mid-Season 5 22:07 Evidence of missing Byler and Will scenes, plot threads 58:18 Why did it happen? 1:04:43 Conclusion

-teambyler

[90shorrorpaperback]

This was an amazing video, Ronald.

I'd like to point out something that supports the theory that Byler was initially planned and later abandoned: the unwarranted vitriol that the Duffer Brothers showed toward Bylers and all of the other fans who had been analyzing the show as soon as the finale dropped.

Over the course of the last decade, the Duffers and individuals heavily involved with the making of Stranger Things have made numerous comments encouraging active involvement with the media. They've stated that the show was meant to be analyzed, there are very few mistakes in the show, and that everything has a deeper meaning. Their marketing even included messages telling the audience to pay attention, and even within the show there are bits of dialogue encouraging a deeper reading of the text (such as Lucas's line "I don't believe in coincidences anymore" during season 5 volume 1.)

However, as soon as the finale aired, the Duffers completely changed their tune. They called the fans who were analyzing the show "noise," said that people were reading too much into things, and made it seem as though they had just set out to make a surface level sci-fi show to entertain people of all ages, education levels, and media comprehension abilities. Although in the Byler community we saw this as a direct attack, the Duffers also used this as a way to discredit the film buffs who were analyzing the show based on the movie references the Duffers used, and the hardcore sci-fi and horror fans who were heavily analyzing the supernatural plot and horror elements.

This set off instant alarm bells for me. There was no reason to become so angry and defensive toward the fans who were critically engaging with the media .. unless they were trying to cover something up. They knew that people who were analyzing the show were the people most likely to not only call them out on their quality issues, plot holes, and numerous story inconsistences (which we did via cutgate and conformitygate,) but we also were the people most likely to uncover and share any foul play: such as them cutting crucial elements of their story, which caused the entire narrative to fall apart.

Their attack on fans was a strategy designed to silence the people who had the ability to expose them. They acted as though we were all crazy and gave the fans who complied and accepted everything they said carte blanche to harass and attack us, and force us to stay silent. Unfortunately, the Duffers didn't realize that queer people, allies, film buffs, and educated genre fans are used to being harassed and we've all been told to shut up by people opposed to critical thinking for the past decade, so this was nothing new.

[teambyler]

Good point! My first take on the "noise" commentary about Bylers was that they wanted to try to marginalize and silence once and for all the Byler community (we won't shut up of course! and yay us!), and to shut down any theorizing that Byler was once planned (and that there are missing scenes)

But you're right: there's a point to be made on why the sudden about-face when it comes to reading their show closely? What changed? And why did the quality of the show go off a cliff?

There's so much that's different about Season 5 that there have to be answers! BylerGate, DivorceGate... something's rotten!

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Mike No Homo

The fact that Mike never hugs Will during his COMING OUT SCENE (he's physically only touching Lucas and Dustin), never hugs him afterward, and it's EL who's touching Mike during this shot to serve the Mil*ven propaganda:

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Join us in Live Chat for the premiere of #BylerGate video this Friday 4pm Pacific (GMT -8)!

An hour-long video on BylerGate! (The theory that the Stranger Things writing team, including the Duffer Brothers, planned Byler to happen, but abandoned it during the production of Season 5.)

I also talk about what we probably LOST in terms of a stronger season, because removing Byler and decentering Will had profound ripple effects on the 2nd half of Season 5.

0:00 Intro 4:54 Differences from other theories 8:05 Buildup of Byler and its disappearance mid-Season 5 22:07 Evidence of missing Byler and Will scenes, plot threads 58:18 Why did it happen? 1:04:43 Conclusion

-teambyler

[teambyler]

Heated Rivalry is a TERRIBLE show.

The star players of THREE hockey teams all being queer? Where two of them fall in love with each other?

Coming out in a homophobic sport on live television?

So UNREALISTIC!

This is probably why Heated Rivalry flopped so HARD and why there's such a backlash:

I'm gay, and not one friend crush of mine worked out. It hurts, right?

SO glad the Duffers represented that onscreen in Stranger Things, and SO glad the Duffers are getting their just due.

Because we want more REALISM in our fantasy stories.

/s

-teambyler

[teambyler]

The fact that these two lines of dialogue would have been TRUE if it had come from the OTHER person's mouth:

This is the same show where Will, in a veiled confession, said Mike makes him feel like he's not a mistake at all. Where El said Mike thinks she's "a monster, too."

Where El agreed with Max that "there's more to life than stupid boys." Where in s4 she left Mike to be her own superhero. And the only reason Mike and El got back together was Will's LIE.

The only reason Mike thinks El "understands" him is because Will said she thinks he uplifts her. Which in reality was Will's confession that Mike was NOT his Tammy.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

I can listen to "Heroes" again.

Because I just realized it's DAVID BOWIE'S song. Not anyone else's.

-teambyler

[glittergluekintsugi]

can't believe no one's done this one yet

[teambyler]

For real.

And the "kiss"?

Mike kept them lips SHUT like it was FORT KNOX.

All while wearing a CAMOUFLAGE outfit at that.

-teambyler

[teambyler]

My two-hour video on Stranger Things' homophobia premieres Sunday

Hi all! This is another "major work" - a scripted two-hour video detailing the ways how the show treated Will Byers and the Byler fandom was homophobic.

From Wikipedia: "Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who identify or are perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred, or antipathy..."

Join me in LIVE CHAT for the premiere this Sunday 9:00am Pacific (GMT -8)!

0:00 New Intro 5:45 Original Intro 18:33 Worst queerbait of all time 33:00 How they prompted, fueled homophobic bullying 45:42 Homophobic exploitation of Noah Schnapp 1:09:42 Homophobic messages in the story 1:48:46 Conclusion (and one last story!)

-teambyler