naina✨

In this analysis I’ll be mentioning things I’ve mentioned in prior posts. But also  new details I’ve never discussed (most of which are in relation to Jonathan with Lonnie). Essentially to show a more cohesive picture of WHY i find Lonnie so … ‘questionable’, to say the least. WARNING NOW: the new stuff will be in the “keep reading” section and could be very tr**gering-s.a, inc*st subtext, etc. Everything BEFORE the ‘keep reading’ section won’t delve into those darker aspects. Ok let’s begin

CHARACTER INTRODUCTION

How he’s introduced and discussed before we ever see him:

The very first thing we hear is: Lonnie being suspected of k*dnapping Will (by Hopper). Joyce in turn says that’s doubtful given how Lonnie treated Will and mentions how Lonnie  called Will h*mophobic slurs (later she says to him”you never cared about Will”) . After this ( in Joyce’s words) we hear her mention Lonnie is dating a “teenager” (she’s in her early 20s/almost 30 years younger).  We then have Jonathan have a flashback of hearing Joyce and Lonnie fighting on the phone-because Lonnie flaked on visiting Will. After this, Jonathan mentions how Lonnie isn’t considerate of Will’s interests and tries to force him to like things only Lonnie himself likes. And Jonathan encourages Will to ‘not like things people tell you you’re supposed to …. ESPECIALLY NOT HIM.”

his visual introduction :

We first see beer cans everywhere (a probably sign of Lonnie’s substance ab*se issues) and Jonathan rushing through the house trying to avoid even having to see his dad. He wanders down the corridor opening doors calling for Will-a similar parallel to Will wandering through the house hallway calling for Jonathan & joyce (afraid of the demorgorgon) . Later in s2 Jonathan calls for Will and his mom- and right after he discovers the mindflayer drawing. Showing a connection between the creatures and their father.

Then (at Lonnie’s)  as Jonathan wanders through the corridor-we see a figure covered in shadow rush from the side- and pin jonathan into wall (simillar to Neil). Jonathan freezes before pushing him off and yelling “get off”. Than Lonnie tries hugging him and once again Jonathan has to say a 2nd time “get off me… MAN.” We then see Jonathan scowl at Lonnie- and between the 2 is a child’s bike. Similar to the bike, Will abandoned after he ran away from the demorgorgan. We have many parallels between Lonnie & the demorgorgon.

The demogorgan in d&d means “deep father ” and nancy says its like a’ lion’. Lonnie’s name literally means ‘lion’/he’s technically a father. He also Low-key pounced on jonathan like a lion.   The demogorgan hunts a deer / attacks jonathan who was holding a bat (and Lonnie was associated with baseball, and Jonathan mentions bambi when mentioning his dad forcing him to hunt and k*ll a rabbit (similar to Brenner trying to force El to k*ll a cat). And when jonathan went to lonnie’s (before he’s pushed)- even the songs jonathan listens to while going to Lonnie reference the supernatural.I’ll discuss that in more detail in the ‘keep reading’ section.

We also have other details. Lonnie being framed next to a single lit light bulb when standing across from jonathan (like the demogorgan standing across from Will, and the lightbulb glowing-as Will uses Lonnie’s gun against the demorgorgan, similar to jonathan using a bat and nancy using lonnie’s gun against the demorgorgan) . A dog barking at Lonnie- like how chester the dog barked at the demogorgon. Even Lonnie talking to people at Will’s funeral-causes Joyce to have a flashback of Will describing lighting ‘bad guys’ on fire (something Jonathan does to the demorgorgan later in s1).Lonnie hammering into the byers wall (talking about how someone should be held accountable for what happened to Will) and it transitions to Mike stabbing a piece of paper and talking about Will getting trapped in the upsidedown.  

We also see Jonathan check the trunk for Will (which is sketch on it’s own)-but later we see the mindflayer throw people in trunks too. We also have Lonnie saying he explored around the quarry around the house & later Jonathan mentions the demorgorgan only traveled in a few miles radius around his house.

Okay now onto the really bad stuff…

So before I begin just know some of the stuff mention relates to how I believe Will created with his powers - the upsidedown/creatures, the lab/subjects,  the Russians,etc. Although most of this post is about Jonathan. Ok let’s begin…

After the first teaser trailer in July, I compiled all of the officially released information related to jancy and ST5 and tried to slot it together into a timeline, by episode. Now, with the most recent release of the trailer and the September teaser, we have even more content to fill out the timeline. All images are in what I believe to be chronological order. I'm trying to let the images speak for themselves so I am limiting my commentary here.

Again, I am only using content officially released to us by Netflix or the Stranger Things team. I also may switch some of my original order to reflect things we've learned since July.

(NOTE: I had to omit a few images to keep it under the 30 image limit.)

First up, we have Jonathan and Joyce yelling at each other in the streets. Jonathan brings up how Joyce is leaving him to deal with things as usual. He's picked a parent and he so desperately needs to believe that he picked the right one, but Joyce makes that difficult. Jonathan is constantly trying to pep talk and pacify to stop things from going off the rails, but unfortunately that means the person most likely to lose it is also him.

Also he's a child. He shouldn't have to worry about all this.

To make things worse, Joyce reunites with Lonnie when Jonathan stops supporting her the way she needs.

Is this something that has happened before? Does Lonnie come and go when things fall apart? The way Jonathan and Joyce talk about him to Hopper (separately I might add) makes me believe they really don't want Lonnie figuring out what's going on so he can wheedle his way back in.

But he does! And he gets into Jonathan to behave, this time picking Joyce's side when he was badmouthing her to Jonathan before. And Jonathan can't even be mad at Joyce because she does have mental health issues, and he can't get mad at Lonnie because he doesn't want to make things any worse so...

But you can tell why Jonathan didn't believe him when he said he wanted to see him more. Why he's trying very carefully to warn Will about him. Lonnie pits them against each other so that he always comes out on top - this is why Jonathan has trust issues. With both of them. Joyce shuts down, Lonnie swoops back in...it's not great.

I imagine Lonnie tells everyone about it whenever this happens.

And then of course we have Joyce throwing Lonnie out when she realizes she's fallen for his nonsense again. But she's also alone and struggling, at her most rock bottom with no idea what to do next. No money, no support, home in tatters, mental health in shreds, both sons gone, judged by the entire town. It's a cycle. I feel tired for her.

There's a lot of tension in the house with everyone. Seeing Joyce parent Will in season 2 makes it easy to gloss over all this, but the Byers also had way more support. Bob was a fun presence that lent their home a bit of levity, Hopper was dropping by to check on them, Will was getting some kind of professional care, and having a small child there gives them a bit of hope and joy.