emma

We as an audience are reminded religiously of his suffering throughout the show; there is little to no respite from it.

Having a character experience the horrors every season, continuously stripped of his autonomy, constantly isolated, state explicitly that he will not fall in love, have multiple shots of him longingly observing romance from a distance, weave his feelings into his art, never to be allowed to express them directly….getting THAT ending.

And it's not even specifically about him wanting love. He wanted it with Mike.

There was never even the faintest hint of him being interested in anyone else. They never showed him glancing at any other boys. They didn't have the guy he met in the gay bar be someone he had an interaction with previously or watched from afar. He didn't even talk about celebrities he found attractive, which many of the other characters did.

It was always about Mike, and that's a choice the Duffers made.

But, no, his grand ending is merely that, now that he's discarded the feelings he had for Mike that were holding him back, he likes himself enough to go meet other guys several years in the future (it's a bar, so he couldn't legally be in one until at least 1992) with the hint that he might someday find love.

I'm tired of straight audiences that feel like gay people finding self acceptance is a good resolution just because they're uncomfortable with seeing queer love being depicted as equal to their own.

and then you can see how the lights go out and his face shifts and suddenly it's real life and his mother is standing there and vecna took the kids and the boy in front of him is not the boy from the swings anymore

except mike did love him

aka Vecna told us via an allegory that he forced Will out.

While Will says that him coming out and telling his truth is a way to "defeat" Vecna... I don't think that's actually the case?

Because if we look back at the last scene between Will and Vecna... Vecna says this:

Vecna is saying he wants to "smoke a fox from its den".

What does this mean exactly? Well...

In a literal sense, it refers to the hunting technique. Putting fire into the entrance of an underground fox's den will force a fox out of it. The fox MUST come out or else it will die from carbon monoxide poisoning.

In a figurative sense, it means:

Forcing someone to leave their place of safety/comfort

Forcing someone to expose a secret