Sam!

the fact that the painting was never brought up again.

first of all this is just terrible writing for the fact that will had to lie about the intentions of said painting in order to make mike feel better, and when you do something like that in a story the lie is SUPPOSED TO BE FOUND OUT EVENTUALLY. mike hangs that painting on his wall at the end of the story still believing that its creation was el’s idea and that’s just so fucked up, and also it makes no sense that mike wouldn’t be like “oh el thanks for the painting by the way” but of course the duffers never added that conversation because they didn’t WANT the truth about the painting to be something mike ever knew.

but worse than all of that is the fact that wills feelings for mike were only ever a plot device to bring mike and eleven together (and it didn’t even fucking work mind you). will told mike exactly how he himself feels about him, disguising it as elevens feelings in order to help mike fix his relationship. he gave eleven all the emotional credit for his painting so that mike would feel better, and it was never even brought up again. i can’t begin to explain how absolutely evil of thing this is to do, wills feelings for mike were dragged out until the last season making it seems like it would actually build up to something, ANYTHING, even a heart to heart rejection scene would be better than essentially telling your viewers “wills feelings were becoming too real so we needed to just get rid of them really quickly so it wouldn’t be something we actually need to discuss properly.”