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Go for it Nakamura! x Byler!!!

There is a difference between something being enjoyable and something being good. The Stranger Things finale was enjoyable in the broadest, most surface-level sense, and that is precisely why it fails. This was NOT a finale made for people who watched closely, who actually took HIGH interest. It was not made for viewers who tracked character psychology, thematic parallels, visual language, or long-form narrative promises. It was made for the General Audience in its most reductive form. GA that remembers vibes but not meaning, moments but not arcs, couples but not conflicts.

This Is Critique, Not Hatred

It may be tempting to dismiss this essay as the rant of a disappointed shipper or a hardened critic. That would be inaccurate and dishonest. This is not written out of malice. It is written out of care. Stranger Things is capable of greatness. That is precisely why this failure hurts. Critique is not hatred-it is engagement. It is the act of taking a story seriously enough to hold it accountable for what it promises and what it withholds. This essay does not claim the series has no merits. It claims that in its handling of Byler and by extension its queer audience, it chose safety over sincerity, comfort over courage, and ambiguity over accountability. And that choice mattered.

The show was no longer asking anything of its audience except recognition. And recognition is easy. Meaning is not. This finale offered the illusion of emotional payoff without actually doing the work. It was nostalgia weaponized as storytelling. It relied on the audience remembering what Stranger Things used to feel like instead of confronting what it had become. For casual viewers such as families, kids, parents who wanted a night out, people who never interrogated the show’s themes beyond “friendship beats monsters” this ending probably worked. It hit all the expected beats: heroic sacrifices, sentimental speeches, callbacks, musical cues designed to do the emotional labor for the script. But for anyone who actually cared, deeply, painfully, analytically, this finale was not just disappointing. It was insulting. Fanservice for the Lowest Common Denominator IF YOU WILL!!!!!

Everything in the finale was designed to provoke a reaction rather than resolve a question. Steve’s fake death existed solely to make the audience scream before immediately undoing it. The Mileven montage existed for viewers who remember “Mike and El are a couple” without remembering that the show itself DISMANTLED their relationship for two entire seasons. The Eddie flashback was emotional shorthand for fans who never needed his arc contextualized, only re-triggered. The Vecna montage recycled horror imagery without adding thematic weight. The graduation speech and “I believe” sequence reduced the Party to nostalgia mascots instead of characters who had grown, fractured, and changed. Even the humor felt regressive. Steve as a sex-ed teacher because “sex is funny.” Stacey returning as a visual gag. Holly and Derek being implied as a couple because even the most obnoxious male character “deserves” love, a love denied to the gay main character who suffered the most. This was not fanservice for fans. It was fanservice for consumers. And for everyone else, especially those who had spent years reading between the lines, tracking symbolism, investing emotionally in unfinished arcs, the message was clear: You were never the priority.

The Show Violated Its Own Moral Framework

Stranger Things has always positioned itself as a story about outsiders: children who are different, marginalized, misunderstood, or actively despised by society. Its core message insists that these differences are not weaknesses, and that survival, both literal and emotional, comes from embracing what the world tells you to hide. That is why the handling of Byler feels so profoundly wrong. The show asks its audience to celebrate outcasts while simultaneously silencing its queer narrative. It invites empathy, then withdraws it. It preaches self-acceptance, then treats queerness as something that must remain implicit, unresolved, and safely ignorable. The aftermath makes this contradiction even clearer. Fans grieving this loss are dismissed as delusional, mocked for caring, and told that what they saw was never real, despite the show itself laying the groundwork for that interpretation. This is not just fandom cruelty; it is a narrative failure that enabled it. When a story about resisting conformity bends itself to heteronormative comfort, it is no longer practicing what it preaches.

This Was Queerbait. Plain and Simple. 

They didn't make Mileven kiss, just so they could tease us with Byler, dangle it one last time, give us hope. Then absolutely CRUSH EVERY LAST BIT OF HOPE LEFT WITH SLOPPY EPILOGUE BOYFRIEND AND SUPPOSED ESTABLISHED RELATIONSHIP. I was queerbaited for the first time in my life, and it was devastating in a way I was not prepared for. Queerbaiting is not “when your ship doesn’t go canon.” It is when creators INTENTIONALLY construct romantic subtext, parallels, and symbolism, acknowledge that audience interpretation, market the show using that interpretation, and then refuse to resolve it, while continuing to profit from the hope they cultivated. That is exactly what happened here.

Byler was not a delusion. It was not projection. It was not “fetishising” adolescents. It was not fandom inventing meaning out of nothing. It was built slowly, deliberately, and repeatedly over the course of the series using the same tools the show used for its canonical couples:

Cinematography

Color theory

Musical motifs

Dialogue parallels

Narrative mirroring

Character psychology

Marketing and interviews

This is why the pain is so deep. Because this wasn’t just emotional investment, it was trust. And that trust was broken. They precisely knew what string they were pulling, and they pulled them hard enough to choke us, leaving us stranded and sucking out that last drop of hope.

Stranger Things mattered to me because it was about outcasts. About kids who didn’t fit. About being different in a world that punishes difference. I am queer. I spent years suppressing parts of myself because I didn’t believe they would be accepted. I didn’t have the language for it at first, just the feeling of being wrong, of being separate, of watching everyone else move forward while I stayed frozen. I outcasted myself, before I even knew the reason behind it… Robin’s coming out mattered because it was quiet, terrified, intimate. It didn’t ask the audience to applaud. It asked them to listen. Her coming out felt so refreshing, new. Like a completely new door opened up, new possibility, made its way to my surface. And then there was Will Byers. Will is not just a gay character. He is longing personified, for god’s sake. Softness in a hostile world. Love that has nowhere to go. Fear of being seen too clearly. He is the ache of knowing who you are before the world allows you to say it. Mike Wheeler, intentionally or not, was written as his mirror. The repression. The fear. The emotional paralysis. The inability to articulate love even when it is consuming him. Internalized homophobia coded so consistently that ignoring it now requires willful blindness. Their bond resonated because it wasn’t loud. It was intimate. It was built in glances, pauses, shared looks, silences, unfinished sentences. It was a slow burn rooted in character, not trope. That kind of story doesn’t just entertain. It stays with you. At least it did with me.

Volume 1 and 2

Volume 1 immediately shocked me with its 18‑month time jump. After ending the previous season in literal apocalypse, the show skips nearly two years ahead without offering any meaningful insight into how these characters survived that reality. We never see how they lived through it, how it changed them, or how it reshaped their relationships. The jump feels less like intentional storytelling and more like avoidance, an easy way to move past consequences that deserved exploration. The aesthetic of Volume One is noticeably different from previous seasons. This is not inherently a flaw. The series clearly draws inspiration from a range of films, and stylistic evolution can be powerful when done with purpose. Taste is subjective, and aesthetic change alone is not a strong criticism. What is striking, however, is how many characters feel out of character. Emotional beats are no longer allowed to exist subtly. Everything is spelled out, over-explained, and punctuated by humor that often dumbs characters down rather than revealing anything meaningful. The show no longer trusts its audience to read between the lines.

That said, Episode Episode 4 stands out. It is one of the strongest episodes of the season. Will’s self‑acceptance arc, the expansion of his sexuality, and the 8mm film reel montage of the very people he loves empowering him to embrace himself were genuinely beautiful. That sequence was emotional, restrained, and deeply effective. It felt like classic Stranger Things - visual storytelling, silence doing the work, meaning earned rather than announced. More importantly, it felt like a promise. Volume One introduced new, deliberate Byler subtext: Robin’s “signals” conversation, the radio station framing, repeated visual parallels, and an overall softening of Mike and Will’s dynamic into something undeniably intimate. At his point, even parts of the General Audience, even viewers who do not engage deeply with subtext, were acknowledging that Byler was a real possibility. This was not niche fandom speculation anymore. The show actively encouraged debate, engagement, and hope. And even if Byler had not become canon, that hope could have been honored through honest closure and clear narrative explanation. Instead, Volume One ended by raising expectations it had no intention of fulfilling.

Volume Two felt hollow. Rushed. Over-explained. Stranger Things used to trust its audience. It let moments breathe. Framing, silence, glances, even the space between words, all of it spoke. In the final season, everything is spelled out, flattened, rushed toward spectacle. Characters explained feelings instead of living them. Emotional beats were queued by music instead of earned through interaction. Conversations felt artificial, timed, written to be “clear” rather than honest. And nowhere was this failure more devastating than in Will’s coming out. Robin’s coming out worked because it was private. Vulnerable. Terrifying. Will’s was turned into a performance. In the middle of an apocalypse. In front of half the cast, like some kind of press conference. A scene that is supposed to be empowering, was turned into something dehumanizing and awkward. Will didn’t need to make a list of reasons why he should be treated equally, it felt like a powerless defence. Coming out is not about bravery in front of a crowd. It is about safety and asserting WHO YOU ARE. It’s about choosing the people who shaped you: Joyce, Jonathan, Mike, the people in his 8mm reel. The very same people who, empowered by their love, helped him embrace and accept himself for who he is. Instead, the moment felt impersonal. Like it existed to check a box rather than honor the character. I am glad Will came out. I am devastated by how little care was given to who he is. Seeing years of personal hope reflected in him crumble.

The Duffers and Netflix had clearly built Will’s love for Mike as a systematic and deliberate arc, designed to increase queer engagement. They prepared this romance with careful attention, visual cues, dialogue, even the radio tower interactions, and then chose to dismantle it at the last moment. The hope they had cultivated was deliberately withheld from payoff. Will’s public coming-out became a moment stripped of intimacy and narrative satisfaction, unlike Robin’s private, empowering moment. Queer fans were denied the same care and respect afforded to heterosexual arcs, and the creators’ insistence on “realism” for Will, when no other character was held to this standard, highlights a conscious choice to constrain queer storytelling while preserving safe, heteronormative resolutions.

Ambiguity Is Not Neutral When Power Is Unequal

One of the most persistent defenses of the finale is that the story was left “open to interpretation.” This argument collapses under even minimal scrutiny. Ambiguity is only neutral when all audiences are granted equal narrative protection, and they are not. Straight audiences are given clarity, affirmation, and closure by default. Queer audiences are given implication, denial, and silence, then told to be grateful for crumbs. When a story repeatedly encodes queer subtext, acknowledges that interpretation publicly, and then refuses to resolve it while resolving every heterosexual arc explicitly, that ambiguity becomes a tool of exclusion rather than artistic nuance. This is not subtlety. This is asymmetry.

Main 3 characters arc RUINED:

Mike Wheeler is the greatest victim of this ending.

 If Mike is straight, then the writing renders him emotionally negligent, inconsistent, and cruel. If Mike is queer, then the show condemns him to lifelong repression without resolution…. Either way, his character is hollowed out. Mike always felt useless for people he cares about. He doesn’t have superpowers, he isn't given an opportunity to lead this season, despite his CANON desire. His repression of emotions, internalized homophobia and queercoding are not addressed, leaving him in the closet and portrayed as BAD BOYFRIEND AND FRIEND, NO “BEST FRIEND” funny isn’t it?. He didn’t save El, he wasn’t able to. All his deepest fears are confirmed, he is not the leader, the HEART, he is left to live with choices of other people, without the ability to change anything. The character that was always portrayed as a leader and wanted to be one, but was afraid to be a useless sidekick is now left to FOREVER WE A WIDOW TO A SUPERMAN. His relationship with El since the last half of S4 was BUILT ON WILL’S FEELINGS. ISN’T THAT ALONE A CONTRADICTION TO THEIR LOVE???????? The van scene made Mike feel responsible for El because he thought she was supposed to need him, rely on him. His love confession was motivated BY WILL. He is with El’s body, but with Will’s soul. “Mike is OBVIOUSLY straight” AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHY WE NEEDED BYLER. To show that being queer isn’t always OBVIOUS and that a lot of queer people reject that part about themselves so much, so they convince themselves that they are straight. And while now Mike knows of Will’s love, it is never acknowledged. He never confronts the painting. He cannot say “I love you” to his girlfriend—not even in a goodbye scene where death is imminent. He never explains why. He never articulates his internal world. The radio station scene in the finale, where Mike “establishes” their relationship as best friends, is not closure. Right before we see Mike in the basement, staring at Will's binder and crying before he puts his own away, looking obviously emotional and triggered at their D&D books pressed together. This specific scene directly parallels another movie that doesn't have a happy ending for the two queer characters. It. Now, I don’t DARE compare the atrocity that was Stranger Things to a beautiful movie duology that was a million times better written, but I still think it requires discussion. Richie is Mike in the sense that their stories end in a very similar way. While Will doesn’t die, the bond and the love that Will and Mike had does die. In the last scenes of It, Richie completes the initials by carving it into that wood after Eddie dies, confirming the implications that he DID, in fact, love him as more than just a friend.

It’s a tragic and heartbreaking ending, and is set up in a very similar way to Byler. Small hints, shared looks, queer-coding, internalized homophobia, all that good stuff. Byler and Reddie both didn’t get a happy ending. One was because one of the two died. One was a result of bad writing choices. But what if the latter wasn’t just a result of homophobic straight people writing a queer story, but also a result of Mike's own internalized homophobia never being addressed? All throughout the story, it is implied that the reason Mike struggles with being "different" is because he is secretly gay and in love with his best friend, Will Byers.

The end of the line for the party is every single one of them putting their own stories back on the shelf in Mike’s basement. But what does Mike do? He stands there after Will puts his binder away. He stares at it. He starts crying. He puts his own binder away, and then goes upstairs. That isn’t a random ending. That small, tiny little scene alone confirms that Will's feelings maybe were reciprocated after all. That’s the saddest ending we could possibly have gotten. Mike’s grief, his silent acknowledgement of loss, is deliberately paralleling the tragic queer stories we love, yet the show intentionally denies him resolution. The creators knew the significance of this scene, and they used it to weaponize ambiguity against the queer audience.

Eleven.

 This girl has survived five seasons of trauma, just to be killed off???? She either dies in the Upside Down as the last sacrifice to a cycle of abuse, or will never see her friends and family again. Hopper's speech meant NOTHING. She was born as a weapon and died like one. Instead of a sincere goodbye, we are shown the version of her and Mike that never existed in the first place. They constantly feel responsible for each other and only make their insecurities worse. Their characteristics don’t align, and they don’t understand each other's values. Their “flaws” don’t complement each other, unlike Byler. The way Mike treated her like a weapon as a tool is forgotten by her and by the narrative. Her independence is forced by chance, it is not her choice. After that, we learn that she survived and escaped ALONE, from the horrors and THE PEOPLE THAT SHE HAD IN HER LIFE. Literally all we know about her personal life is how much she loves and cares for her friends and people around her. We don’t know any of her dreams, aspirations, or goals for the future, which could have justified her leaving everything behind, but now her leaving just makes absolutely no sense. The whole reason for her to tempt herself with suicidal sacrifice is to protect the people she loves. She does that, she protects the people she loves AND supposedly survives. Why leave?????? ALSO this includes Mike and Eleven parting ways and Eleven supposedly finds her happiness??? (This parallels Mileven break up in S3 where after Eleven leaves Mike, she is the happiest she’s ever been, except this time, she is alone, alone from her friends, family. I think it directly contradicts mileven endgame) If she survived, her personal journey is dictated by the impossibility to stay with others, not by her OWN decision to move on… Why make this fake-out death with no meaning to the narrative and most importantly to her arc? She absolutely deserved independence and choice to create her own path in life, her last action in the show was made out of NEED, NOT PERSONAL WISH.

The creators deliberately used Mike and Eleven’s separation to amplify Byler grief. By positioning Eleven as emotionally distant and surviving alone, they emphasize the queer “loss” narrative without ever giving Will or Mike closure. Eleven’s independence is framed as narrative convenience rather than character growth, while Will and Mike’s subtextual arc is dismantled. It’s not just poor writing—it’s intentional, a structural choice to favor heteronormative resolutions and manipulate audience expectations.

Will. 

His story of five seasons centered around always feeling different and like a freak. The line of tension was his love for Mike, that was something that made him different, but at the same time made him feel better about himself. It is “resolved” with a diminishing of this love to a simple HALLWAY crush. Mike and Will’s friendship is a central plot point to the story of Stranger Things. Mike is constantly seen defending Will, particularly when people bully him for his queerness. The point of the story is to bring light to "misfits" who are seen by society as less. The writers spend lots of time on the relentless bullying and discrimination that comes with his sexuality. His ONLY "love interest" is his love for his best friend of 10 years. Is it so much to ask that this boy, who is supposed to represent queerness and who has suffered his entire life, get one thing—in the end? It’s not fair for the Duffers to make the decision that Will, out of all characters in the series, has to face unrequited love. They downplay Will’s feelings by forcing him to get over them, by making him realize that Mike is his "Tammy," who was nothing but a tool to get him to come to terms with his identity. Will having an epilogue boyfriend proves to us that he is not worthy of true love, of love that could have been, we never get to know if it was ever meant to be reciprocated. He was right, when he said that he is not gonna fall in love. His love is tolerated, not reciprocated. He is not only not in a relationship with Mike - their friendship is bleak and nothing like it was before. 

"queer stories are supposed to be about self acceptance" why can't they be about love too? 

That question exposes the core violence of this ending. Because Stranger Things did not simply deny Will a relationship, it denied queer love the same narrative legitimacy afforded to straight love. It framed self-acceptance as the endpoint, as if queerness should culminate in quiet endurance rather than mutual desire, reciprocity, or joy. Straight characters are never told that self-acceptance is enough. They are allowed to want more. They are allowed to be chosen. Queer characters, time and time again, are told to settle for survival.

And the show KNEW what it was doing.

The most painful proof of that knowledge is the final needle drop: David Bowie’s “Heroes.” That choice was not random, and it was not innocent. It was recognition. It was the creators acknowledging what this story could have been, what it meant,  and what queer audiences had been holding onto for years. Bowie is not just a song choice. He is queer cultural memory. He is longing, repression, intimacy without safety, love constrained by the world around it. In the context of Mike and Will, the song functioned as a quiet confession: we see it too.

But recognition without responsibility is not care. It is cruelty.

That moment felt like an inside understanding between the audience and the creators, except only one side held power. They used that song to look directly at us, to acknowledge our reading, and then to refuse us closure anyway. It was not homage. It was not tragedy. It was a final reminder that they could see our hope clearly and still choose to leave it unresolved. A final gesture of intimacy that went nowhere. A door shown, never opened. That is why it hurt so much. Because it confirmed that this was never about misunderstanding. It was about choice. And when the story ended without clarity, the damage didn’t stop on screen. By refusing to be explicit, the creators offloaded the consequences onto the audience. Ambiguity became a shield. They now let out insufferable homophobic fans to thrive on our loss. Now the internet is gonna be fled with homophobic assholes laughing in our faces. About how we were delusional and fetishizing and overdramatic, for simply asking to have good representation of queer love. Hope was reframed as embarrassment.

ALL OF THIS COULD HAVE BEEN SOLVED WITH BYLER BEING CANON

If Byler was never intended to be canon, it could have been  at least addressed with honesty and respect, before the final season, or at the very least within it. Other shows have done this. Wednesday, for example, explicitly confirmed ahead of time that Enid + Wednesday would not happen. This established every accusation in an appropriate way. It allowed audiences to disengage, to recalibrate expectations, to avoid being emotionally strung along. Stranger Things chose the opposite approach. They let the subtext deepen. They chose to let it linger, to let people believe, It encouraged analysis, HECK THEY LET to develop will's feelings and even go so far as to give him hope about Mike. It invited audiences to “pay attention to the details.” And then it withheld resolution at the last possible moment.

Byler did not emerge out of thin air. It was not a delusion born of a minority audience wanting something that was never there. It was constructed deliberately, over years, using the same narrative language as the show’s canonical romances: visual parallels, emotional mirroring, symbolic framing, dialogue echoes, and long-term character psychology. The idea that it was accidental requires ignoring the text itself. This was not a narrative impossibility.  It would not have broken the story. It would not have undermined other arcs. It would not have disrupted the show’s themes. If anything, it would have fulfilled them. The only thing it would have cost was safety. The only thing it would have required was courage. Instead what message does this leave? that hope is dangerous?? that trusting a story is foolish??  that caring deeply about queer representation is childish?????? That queerness must always be “realistic” ,restrained, lonely, unfinished, while straight characters are allowed fantasy, excess, and fulfillment.

That shame does not belong to US

There is a difference between tragic queer storytelling and negligent queer storytelling. Tragedy still requires intention, care, and acknowledgment. Neglect pretends the story never mattered. What Stranger Things chose was not tragedy. It was abandonment. It bypassed the conflict entirely and left queer audiences to carry the emotional aftermath alone, while the narrative absolved itself of responsibility. 

And still, something real came from this. Byler existed and will always exist as a shared experience. It will linger in analysis, subtext, in fanarts, in fanfics, in edits, in conversations where people finally found language for feelings they had been taught to suppress. It connects people to community. It makes softness feel valid. It makes longing feel seen. Canon cannot erase that.

To anyone who feels foolish or ashamed for believing: you were not stupid. You were not delusional. You were not “reading too much into it.” The show invited analysis. It asked viewers to pay attention, to reflect, to connect themes and details across seasons. You did exactly what the story trained you to do. Following that invitation was not a failure, it was engagement.

You have every right to grieve. You have every right to be angry. But that anger does not belong inward.

This was never our shame to carry. The failure lies with the creators who chose safety over honesty, ambiguity over courage, and engagement over care. What matters now is what we do with what this story awakened in us, the clarity, the community, the insistence that queer love deserves to be central, not conditional.

This story ended. But representation does not. Media will continue. Stories like this will continue, and so will ours. No corporation or creator gets to decide what this meant to us, or what we carry forward. They don’t control how we love, how we hope, or how we recognize ourselves. That power was never theirs to hold.

Yes, this ending hurt. Yes, it’s devastating when something you trusted chooses cowardice. But what matters now is what comes after. We do not let this loss harden us or teach us that hope was a mistake. It wasn’t. Caring deeply was never foolish. Wanting queer love to be centered was never wrong.

This story doesn’t get the final word. We do. We decide what stays. We decide what matters.

I already posted this on my tik tok acc: lukoshute 🫶