certified in something

We need to talk about the coming-out scene

First of all: I am happy for Will accepting himself, I am happy about having a visible queer main-character in a popular tv-show and if his character arc or this scene in particular were things that made you feel seen I am genuinely happy for you. You probably shouldn't read the rest of this post, though, because I am going to ruin it for you.

Overall I have multiple problems with this scene, which I will explain in no particular order.

The antiquated and overly dramatic coming-out narrative

There was a point in time where stories focussed on coming out marked an extremely important point in the visibility and acceptance of queer characters in media. If done tastefully, I still believe that a coming-out narrative can be something valuable to tell. Sadly I don't feel like this was done here. To me, the big speech with everyone gathered around felt unnecessarily melodramatic. Yes, the big speeches have been a general problem in the current season, but this really felt out of place for the situation. Maybe if they had put more effort in setting it up - given us a small arc of Will trying and ultimately failing to come out to different people, or shown us what ever Vecna had shown him, anything at all to justify why it does have to be a big speech, why he can't first tell Jonathan or Joyce or maybe (like I thought would happen for a hot second) Steve, because Robin basically told him that Steve wouldn't react badly so it might feel like a safe place to start.

Yes, I know the whole thing with Vecna did technically give him a reason to do it this way, but that's another thing I have a problem with.

It should have been his choice

This might be personal taste, but I absolutely hate that Wills coming-out wasn’t framed as something he decides to do, but a necessary plot-point to beat Vecna. At the very least I would have liked to see the future Vecna showed him, to feel his fear of rejection from his family, so that I could empathize during the scene.

The writing.

Listen. I don’t mind a bit of cringe. But from what I gathered, there was a world-ending thread getting closer by the minute. You are honestly telling me that Will gathered almost every plot-relevant character to make a long speech with seemingly no point, and nobody asked what this was about? Even if we pretend like it makes sense that every character is just ready to accept him immediately, with not a single one having a wait-what moment (which would be impressive for a bunch of 80s small-town america kids, considering my very liberal mother didn't know how to deal with me coming-out as a lesbian in 2018), this scene just feels unrealistic, badly paced and badly placed.

The Tammy of it all

Do I personally think making Byler endgame would have been far better for the show? Yes. But regardless... the whole thing about Robin and Tammy was that Robin didn't actually know Tammy. Tammy was just a pretty girl Robin liked to look at. Comparing what Will and Mike had to Robin and Tammy cheapens their friendship to no end, and I find it incredibly heartbreaking.

Final thoughts