"am i still ill?"

this exchange is infamous on MY side of the fandom, of course, because of the Implications™ for those with eyes willing to see (we'll get to that.), but as far as the canon text is concerned it's a scene that contrasts mike's fierce emotional investment with his parents' (and in this scene, nancy's) perceived apathy about will's disappearance, and that apathy is appalling to mike. because caring is mike's job in the story.

pre-lobotomy mike is actually a pretty emotionally intelligent and observant kid. he knows the right things to say to make people feel better about themselves. for example, when troy makes dustin show off his missing collarbones like a circus animal, mike cheers him up: "i think it's kinda cool. it's like you have superpowers or something. like mr fantastic." (he uses variations of the superhero compliment a lot and it usually works! that it bombs with el in season 4 is actually kind of an outlier.) in episode 6, they're biking home together, and dustin has an insecure moment about his place in the party because he was the last person to join. mike insists that lucas isn't his best friend, like dustin claims, and mike specifies, "i mean, he is. but so are you. and so is will."

dustin questions the logic of having more than one best friend, and mike immediately refutes this:

all this to say: in s1 (and s2), mike is very much the heart. mike takes a chance on a strange child he stumbles upon in the woods, decides to trust her, gives her a home and a name, and this changes everything for her and the party. mike resolutely refuses to believe will is dead even though he witnesses his body being pulled out of the quarry, and this eventually leads to will's rescue. mike throws himself off a cliff to save dustin, and we the audience understand this can kill him. mike is willing to put his life on the line to spare dustin the agony of troy's knife, because that's the kind of friend mike is, mike, the kid who defines the word friend as somebody "you'd do anything for" and then proceeds to put ALL of his money where his mouth is.

(we don't technically know to what extent mike understands the risk he's taking here. but dustin begs him not to jump, their bullies get cold feet, and the party are of course all really school-smart kids, so i don't think it's a reach to assume that mike knows this jump could be fatal.)

(i also think the suicidal ideation interpretation requires some ... squinting. i get the appeal, it's really angsty, i'm as happy to indulge in an angsty mike hc as anyone - and squinting™ is a sacred fandom practice! but sometimes i see it talked about as though it's practically canon, and i do insist that this is actually a ... transformative reading of the cliff scene.)

addendum: party leader & season 5

mike is also the "leader" of the party in some capacity. it's interlinked with his role as dungeon master right from the jump: will throws the dice in the pilot, they roll under the table, and lucas insists that if mike didn't see the (too low) result, it doesn't count. mike is often the decision maker, the kid in charge of the plan. that opening scene does such a brilliant job of introducing the party's interpersonal dynamics to the audience, and one aspect of that is that the kids defer to mike's authority to some (however playful) extent, that mike calls the shots. (within reason. mike's hardly a dictator.)

(will, of course, tells mike about the roll anyway - the first one-on-one interaction between mike and will in the whole show is about honesty. it's about the fact that will can't bear lying to him or keeping secrets from him, even about something that seems benign to us. i'm sure this will remain a sweet little moment between them and never be cast in a more heartbreaking light by the trajectory these two characters are gonna go on in future seasons of the show.)

i also love the very fitting detail from the pilot that mike is the president of hawkins middle av club. who fucking else!

but then ... well ... seasons 3 and 4 roll around, and they are what they are. mike has little to do here in terms of action and in terms of being the emotional core of the party (the lobotomy! we shall adress it! soon!), but season 5 seems to have some intention of bringing back mike as the party leader. here he is! narrating plans again and protecting the kids on the battlefield during the mac-z massacre, the latter being one of the best mike moments of season 5. slim fucking pickings, i know. but still ...

paladin shit.

i do think, however, that season 5 overestimates the significance of mike being the "party leader", and it underestimates the significance of mike as the heart, as the emotional core of the party. it's nice seeing mike involved and useful in the action, i was initially really pleased about that, but the more i think about it, the more it feels like it all slightly ... misses the point. it feels like mike (and/or the show itself) learned all the wrong lessons from will's season 4 "you're the heart" speech. i didn't actually miss party leader mike. i don't really care if mike is "in charge" or not. i miss his heart.

season 2 & paladin

i love season 2. i think it's a great sequel, i love the lore that it adds, the shadow monster mind flayer is my favourite st monster, and also s2 mike is perhaps my all-time favourite mike.

season 1 was about loss of innocence - season 2 is about trauma. everyone is reeling from the events of the previous year. mike is adrift after el's disappearance (for all he and the party know, she's dead) and acts up in small teenaged ways: plagiarising schoolwork and graffitying bathroom stalls (king) and stealing from nancy, that sort of thing. we already know that mike has a tendency to lash out when he's upset or hurt or feels out of control, and we see plenty of that here, especially with the way he reacts to max, but he has some harsh moments with pretty much everyone in the party.

but he's exceptionally gentle with will throughout pretty much the whole season, and as the mind flayer's influence worsens, mike's entire purpose reorients around that. it's a very will-centric season for mike: there's a stretch of multiple episodes where dustin and lucas are off doing whatever else, while mike remains glued to will's side. he pays attention, picking up on subtle mood shifts ("he's quiet today - "he's always quiet"); he's the only person will feels comfortable talking to about his episodes, and mike is good at consoling him ("crazy together"); he sleeps on will's floor in the freezing cold and in uncomfortable chairs by will's bedside. this, to me, is mike at his very best. he's protective, he's good at being a kind of emotional anchor. season 2 is mike on his paladin shit, this is mike in knight in shining armour mode, this is the mike will was talking about when he called him "the heart". there he fucking is. THAT'S MIKE. THAT'S MIKE THE BRAVE.

i always got the impression that mike really likes being relied on in this way, like he knows he's good at this too. mike is not an innately confident kid, but stuff like this is really good for his sense of self. this is who he wants to be. (and it's who he is to will. this is why the painting and will's accompanying speech, albeit disguised, is clearly so special to mike.)

all of this culminates in one of my favourite mike moments ever: mike, our storyteller, recounting the swingset memory to get through to a possessed will. now that i've witnessed three whole seasons of post-lobotomy mike (WE'LL GET TO IT), one of the things that really stands out to me about this scene and this speech is that there isn't a sliver of artifice here, or of hesitation, of struggling to admit or articulate the magnitude of his feelings, that is all a product of later seasons, but this is still original mike, and he is all emotion, bearing his heart, openly crying, because that's who mike was. i miss pre-lobotomy mike like a family dog from childhood who went to live on a farm.

i wasn't around for this part, this is st fandom history passed down to me via digital folk tales, but jesus christ, yeah, of course the ship really set sail after season 2. of course it was because of mike. LOOK at him.

lobotomy (seasons 3 and 4)

okay fine i'll talk about it.

between seasons 2 and 3, mike morphs from idealistic big-hearted hot-headed party leader to apathetic oblivious emotionally constipated douchebag idiot. i never tire of pointing out that less than a calendar year passes between "crazy together" and "it's not my fault you don't like girls", like - season 2 mike would FIST FIGHT season 3 mike for that shit. like girl. WHAT HAPPENED? what is the matter with you? that is a whole new guy! i really cannot overstate how much that is SOMEBODY ELSE!

i kept writing paragraphs upon paragraphs here about rain fight vs "i dump your ass" and "you never say it" - (lying through his teeth) "i say it" vs "i didn't say it" - "you didn't have to" and parallels and contrasting scenes and and and and and and but ... this is a horse we've beaten into a fine pulp already. that horse is MUSH on the ground. i want to say something ELSE

the mike personality transplant arrived with a CATASTROPHIC decline in overall writing quality for the show, but of course i held on to some hope that perhaps "what is the matter with mike?" might be a question we'd eventually get an answer to. silly me.

i need to hit him on the head until it cracks open like a piñata. WHAT is going on here. WHAT the matter with him. if the duffer brothers are ever trapped in an elevator with me this ^ is the scene i'm demanding answers for

and this section is just straight-up fanon now i KNOW i don't care. equip the gay mike goggles NOW! thesis statement: i think a version of what we know as the mike lobotomy™ could have been really really cool if it was in service of an eventual gay mike reveal. i had WAY too much faith in the duffer brothers on that front though SORRY that i'm so smart and have so many beautiful ideas! but walk with me! let's frolic through a beautiful non-canon meadow together!

as we've established, mike's presence in the story shrinks quite a bit: in season 4, he's relegated to a boring side quest (sorry suzie. but idgaf), and in season 3 ... well WHAT even happens in season 3 plot-wise and more importantly WHO cares

he feels further away from us in later seasons, doesn't he? he's not really front and center, he's got less to do, but he's also got a lot less interiority, he infamously barely emotes in season 5. he doesn't seem as present even when he is on screen. several of his most defining characteristics have seemingly vanished. he's not really the heart of the party anymore: by the time will calls him that in season 4, i've already sat through two seasons of lobotomy mike, and i don't believe him anymore. mike was, again, never really the protagonist but he was kind of the main kid for us, the one whose shoulder we were peering over. but now we're not privy to his thoughts and feelings and private moments anymore, and that loss is palpable. there's a reason mike getting vecna'd is such a popular AU, that we were all desperately waiting for some kind of mike POV in season 5, because we really haven't had it for years, we've been held at arm's length as much as everyone else - and he wasn't always like this.

imagine his distance from the audience growing in tandem with his distance from the people around him (and himself). the more he hides from them, and from himself, the more he ends up hiding from us, and this gets more and more and more intense to the point where his parents narrowly escape death (should've died btw) and he still just sits there and you kinda wanna grab him by the shoulders and shake him, and we as well as the other characters are practically snapping our fingers in front of his eyes going earth to mike!!!!!!! until we finally reach the moment he cracks open again and WHAT is that moment you ask?

WE'VE GOT A PULSE, PEOPLE!

man. remember when we were all so so so so so convinced we had just witnessed the oh moment? like, i personally knew i was aboard the fucking titanic when this ^ came and went and still, no interiority for this guy, no thoughts going on behind those eyes, nothing to see here. original mike never comes back, it really was about as deep as a kiddie pool all along, everything i just talked about came from MY beautiful mind. well anyways. let's put this boy in some fanfics shall we

eddie interlude (season 4)

i LOVE the idea of eddie as a kind of unrealised version of mike's robin ... unrealised in the sense that they never talk about it and mike doesn't technically know that/if eddie's even queer but maybe there's a perceived queerness (and just the general anti conformity attitude) to eddie that is simultaneously terrifying and also strangely relieving and thrilling to be around. mike of course does not articulate any of that to himself yet. he just knows he's suddenly really into d&d again after having seemingly grown out of it in season 3 and he's growing out his hair like eddie. and sure there's also a little bit of a crush. you know what let me just redirect you to my own tags under another post here:

also worth noting: eddie is the dungeon master of hellfire club (& in this way parallels mike!) so mike is absolved of his storytelling duties and can just focus on being and playing for a change ... speaking of the storytelling thing ...

the storyteller (season 5)

i can't believe i have nice things to say about season 5 but one of the very few choices it makes that i actually like is that it leans into mike's role as the narrator / dungeon master / storyteller harder than the show ever has before. no one has never referred to him as The Storyteller™ out loud before. there's never really been a great deal of commentary on mike being the one writing the d&d campaigns, but it's all over this season, and i like it! it's just right up my alley! really helped solidify him as My Blorbo, like he's a writer at the end HELLO! that was for me!

in theory, the fact that mike narrates one last campaign and gives each character a little send-off is a perfect final scene to me. unfortunately this is still season 5 of stranger things, perhaps thee most braindead and insulting season of television i've ever had the misfortune of clapping eyes on, so this is very much a digging through garbage looking for treasure situation. but you know what, i found a sandwich i think i can salvage by putting a generous heap of fanon headcanon transformative reading hot sauce on it. fuck it we squint™

all the s5 storyteller stuff is ... so incredibly doomed. and this idea of storytelling as a kind of lying permeates the whole thing. you know how fake plastic trees by radiohead is on like EVERY mike playlist? exactly.

(which is fascinating considering mike is the person who introduces the friends don't lie rule. that was mike, right? am i tripping?)

we get mike's little three waterfalls story early on. and it feels ... kinda phony to me. it's a relatively generic, corny image that has nothing to do with who mike and el are as people or as a couple, like he's reaching for well-worn romantic tropes to spin this tale. it feels like he saw this on a postcard. it has an artifice to it! and mike KNOWS THIS! he says OUT LOUD in the epilogue that it was a "fantasy plan. i should've had a real one." something about it feels insincere in the same way his big i love you speech to el in season 4 does. (i may write a separate post about that one day ... hm ...)

el also tells him "this isn't like one of your campaigns, you don't get to write the ending", which is such ... gutting foreshadowing ... doom and despair ... i, like practically everyone else, find that final scene with el in the void baffling and strange in concept and in execution - MUCH to complain about - i, like everyone else, don't think mike's presence specifically feels earned here. (again, horse is MUSH, but for one thing, EVERYBODY FUCKING ELSE WOULD HAVE SAID I LOVE YOU BA- [gunshots]) the one compelling thing about mike being there, imo, is this bit where el asks him to report back to the others, thank them for her, that mike the storyteller must tell the tale of her final moments after the fact, forced to witness but powerless to change the story: the events of the ending are not in mike's control, because this isn't like one of his campaigns, but here he is, traumatised and alive and a shell of himself in the epilogue and tasked with telling the story anyways. not the author, but still the narrator

(none of this changes the fact that this is a terrible ending for el of course. she never gets to tell us about the kind of future she wanted for herself, el's future is fantasised about exclusively by hopper and mike who get to sit around and wax poetic about moving on and el does not get a say at all, and i'm calling misogyny! mike fabricates a less devastating ending for her but his vision for her future is filtered entirely through him and what he presumes to know about her, and what does MIKE know about the life she wanted for herself? even in the three waterfalls scene el is only asking questions - mike spins the tale. the story he fabricates about el's potential survival, where she reaches the three waterfalls alone, is based on his fantasy of their future. it's about helping himself and the other surviving members of the party sleep at night. it's not by her and it's not for her. it's for him. mike is hardly thriving in the epilogue and the storyteller stuff is very very doomed but hey at least they didn't manic pixie dream girl and KILL him.)

and then (now the deep end calls again) as he narrates everyone's epilogues he conveniently omits himself until will (WHO FUCKING ELSE?) prompts him "and the storyteller? what about him?" and MIKE SAYS:

i had to skip around the finale to find this screencap and took psychic damage again. please clap!

i know i know i know. canonically this is simply him saying "i'm gonna be a writer and tell the magical tale of our adventures :)" and i unironically adore that for mike. author!mike canon oh my god. good for you darling. the thing is just that anytime this storytelling thing has come up with you this season it's been kinda empty phony fantasy plans. you just did it again you just told them all this story about how el could totally be alive and everyone can see through it but is indulging you because they know you're grieving. you are telling YOURSELF stories ... but they are only stories ... lies, even ... they do not have the power to change reality and she knew this ... but you keep telling them anyways ... is there anything else you're not being honest about

will, having just completed a character arc about embracing and telling the truth (coming out), asks about the storyteller > "the storyteller keeps telling stories" > the stories are lies > the storyteller is a liar > will, from the moment we meet him, chooses to tell the truth* > the storyteller chooses not to.

(*well actually, will withholds one pretty big truth too. but if i get into that right now i'm gonna walk up the walls of my room again.)

also worth noting: because mike is the dungeon master again, he is not actually playing as a character during this campaign. i think that's how d&d works. there's the choice between 1. narrating the story and 2. being an active participant in the story. again something something distance from the audience narrating lying omitting yourself from the story in favour of telling it lest the audience successfully take the baseball bat to the piñata and figure you OUT. ya FRUIT

for dessert, some assorted little mike headcanons from me to you

gets the heart + crown symbol from will's painting tattoed on his arm in his twenties. heart on his sleeve. you understand. eventually full sleeves i think but the first tattoo is the heart.

will gets his fruity little earring meanwhile mike gets an eyebrow piercing. i also read a fic once where he had snake bites but i'm not married to that. but yeah anyway. piercings! tattoos! a mullet even! anything that has karen and ted clutching their pearls!

i like the idea of fantasy novel writer mike but i also like the idea of comic book writer / graphic novelist mike (bonus points if will draws the art). okay this isn't a headcanon this is just me saying i like all the options lmao. i just think he's neat!

anxiety and adhd. because i say so.

THE END <3 thank you for going on this journey with me < 3 this post just kept growing and growing new heads like a fucking thessylhydra but i had SO much fun writing it.

Tags