For the Stranger Things fans who are relatively new to fandom and/or don't know The Lore: this same thing (a secret finale rumor) happened almost exactly nine years ago with Sherlock.
The BBC adaptation of Sherlock started in 2010, was wildly popular, and had queer subtext from the get-go. The two leads move in together, they get dinner and are mistaken for a couple, Sherlock shows no interest in women, John's sister is gay, being with Sherlock cures John's psychosomatic limp, and all of this happens in the first half of episode one. You get the idea.
As the series goes on, Sherlock and John keep getting mistaken for a couple, John tells characters multiple times that he's not gay, it's all very “funny ha ha comedy.” They're also willing to die for each other, spiral when they're alone, and are generally two halves of a whole. The subtext is basically text at this point, but surely audiences won't take it seriously? Surely they'll see this is just guys being dudes? /s
January 2017 marked the Series 4 finale of Sherlock, and probably the finale of the whole show, though it's never been officially ended or renewed. This finale was widely disliked by the fandom. It was so widely disliked, in fact, that a section of the fanbase was convinced of a secret, good finale that would come out as a surprise the next week. No such luck. I joined the fandom about a year after this, so this is all secondhand information, but I encourage you to look up the secret episode or TJLC (The Johnlock Conspiracy) if you want to learn more.
There are many more things to consider, but here are just a few: John is ex-military and often unlucky in love, so there's plenty of potential for internalized homophobia. One of the showrunners is gay, and on the other showrunner's other show, the equivalents of Holmes and Watson are married. The showrunners said the characters wouldn't end up together, but they have to keep the public guessing and are therefore untrustworthy. The show had short seasons with two years between each one, highly unusual before the streaming TV landscape of today. I suspect these long hiatuses drove the fandom insane.
Take things that are overtly mentioned in the show, add subtext, give the audience a few years to overanalyze and theorize, and watch it implode. This week, the result was Conformitygate.
I've learned in the last year that the more time you take to develop a fan theory, the less likely it is that the result will meet your expectations. Storytellers are sometimes not as thoughtful as you give them credit for, and they view their stories and priorities in a different way than you do. It can be hard to prove that queerbaiting is intentional, or if the writers were clueless or careless. But if many different people interpret a work of art in the same way, there must be something to that interpretation, even if it doesn't match the artist's intent.
The best we can do is to learn from our interactions with media and the world, and to become more thoughtful consumers and creators.
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