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Imagine finding out you have 90 minutes to tie up a love story that's developed over thousands of years. You create something beautifully in character and completely on point for the plot. You pay homage to the original writer's legacy in a fitting and poetic way and create an ending that not only shows the depth of two people's love for each other but the wider love they have for the thing that brought them together in the first place.

And then you go online to find the loudest outcry is that everyone hates it and "THEY DIDN'T EVEN KISS!"

APOLLO JUSTICE: CUTIEPIE ATTORNEY 🐰✨🩷

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We are slowly realizing where we’ve been standing as viewers the entire time. Those inconsistencies aren’t necessarily mistakes, but fractures in the narrative. Those orange graduation robes, Will’s comment on the Melvald’s milkshakes when they didn’t sell them anymore in 80’s, the Abyss being a desert despite the Mind Flayer liking it cold (and a million more inconsistencies) and the way everyone looks old-fashioned, especially Mike in his slicked-back Henry Creel hairstyle.

These are Henry’s memories bleeding into the reality he’s constructed for Mike. Vecna can’t imagine the future, he can only remix the past. So the future feels… off.

Vickie disappearing, Dr. Kay’s whereabouts being unresolved, Will being sidelined after V1 though being framed as essential and Vecna’s “one last time” speech, ALL matters because Vecna only includes what he knows.

What’s important to know is: Camazotz is not chaotic. It is calm, efficient, and horrifyingly peaceful. Children bounce balls in perfect rhythm and houses look identical. Anyone who deviates is “corrected.” And Camazotz is controlled by a single controlling intelligence called IT. And IT controls your thoughts, and makes you believe that sameness is safety.

Camazotz is also out of sync with the rest of the universe. It’s a stuck-place.

Sound familiar?

That’s exactly what they’ve established in season four, that the Upside Down is stuck on the day Will disappeared. In this scenario: Vecna = IT

Both believe humanity is flawed, want to remove pain by removing choice, and offer “peace” instead of freedom. Vecna doesn’t just kill people, he rewrites how they see reality.

Now, Mike is the ideal target here.

Mike is vulnerable in the exact way Camazotz exploits: he narratives reality (DM, storyteller), he believes stories should mean something, and he wants endings. So Vecna doesn’t break Mike with trauma like he’s done with his other victims (Chrissy, Fred, Patrick, Max), he gives him all the things he seemingly wants: a finished story and a healed town.

That’s IT’s tactic right there saying “you don’t have to think anymore.”

This is why the epilogue feels so wrong. Just like Camazotz, everyone behaves similarly, pain is resolved too neatly, “difference” disappears, time jumps forward without process. It’s not a happy ending.

Will’s Role = Meg’s Role

In A Wrinkle in Time, Meg doesn’t win by being strong. Instead, she wins by feeling pain correctly, refusing to give up on love, accepting that life is messy. Will fits this role perfectly.

This is why Will’s coming out scene felt weird and out of character. It isn't a moment of true self-assertion-it's a moment of resignation inside Vecna's false reality. Instead of claiming what he wants, Will reframes his feelings for Mike as something already lost and quietly steps aside, hence dubbing it as “a crush,” which directly contradicts the core of his character: Will has always held on, even when it hurt. Even when hope was dangerous. In a Vecna-constructed Camazotz, however, love is allowed only if it's non-disruptive-feelings can be confessed, but not acted on, because action creates change. By having Will "give up" on Mike, the illusion neutralizes the very bond that has repeatedly pulled Will back from the brink.

It turns his love into something inert, a memory instead of a motive, and in doing so preserves the stasis Vecna’s world depends on. Will’s “acceptance” isn’t growth or maturity but compliance. A surrender that feels peaceful only because the pain has been anesthetized. It’s the kind of resolution Vecna offers everyone, relief without liberation, closure without truth, where holding on is recast as weakness and letting go is mistaken for strength.

If Mike is trapped in Camazotz, then Mike isn’t screaming or suffering. He’s calm, grown up, he’s “moved on.” Exactly like the epilogue showed.

Which is exactly how Camazotz wins.

But this is why Will is the key, or the “exit.”

Vecna’s false reality, like Camazotz, depends on flattening emotion and smoothing over pain, and Will is the one character who cannot accept that kind of lie.

Unlike Mike, who copes by shaping events into a story with meaning and closure, Will remembers trauma accurately and viscerally; he doesn’t romanticize it, rush past it, or turn it into a neat ending.

Having lived inside Vecna’s mind and survived, Will can recognize when memories are being blended, rewritten, or “improved,” and by naming what feels wrong, what doesn’t match how it actually felt, he breaks the illusion’s logic.

queerbait is when the creators deliberately frame same-gender relationships using romantic or queer-coded tropes to attract queer audiences, but never follow through with it. so basically byler.

if byler didn't have a chance of being endgame, they would've made a statement years ago. they know their fanbase and they know majority of it is filled with bylers. and before u say, "if they made a statement it would've spoiled it." exactly. if it would've spoiled the show, that means there was a VERY CLEAR chance of it happening.

byler was 100% queerbait, it wasn't just us getting our hopes up.

not to mention, they dragged out will's love for mike for 5 seasons straight and then watered it down to a silly hallway crush only a couple days later of him asking robin how she knew vickie wanted to date.

And I don't mean it just because byler didn't happen. But because nothing about Henry was explained, how he reached in that cave, what he was doing, who was that man with the briefcase. Like they said they would explain Henry, his memories and his past but I didn't realise it was gonna be just a single scene in the finale? And where were the demogorgons and demobats and demodogs in the finale fight? Was this a joke?

What was the point of military and lockdown and strict government action? Where did Sam Owens go btw while we are at it? No seriously there was no plot point for the military at all. They captured Kali and then they killed her. That was their arc. I'm crying at how badly handled this all was. Kali's death did not serve a purpose either. She wasn't killed for freedom or martyrdom, she was killed because the writers didn't know how to handle her potential and neither did they know how to close the military arc. She would've been family to Eleven for god's sake.

Eleven's decision was also one of the worst ones. She told Hopper to trust her to make the right choice and then she- What was the point, no seriously what was the point of Hopper and Mike's speech if the mistreated, abused girl couldn't even get her happy ending? At the end of the day you took the marginalised community and dragged her down with hate, internal conflict and ended her making a victim to the abuse she was never able to move on from. And even if she did survive, she's alone and isolated from the people who love and care about her. She's forced to be alone so as not to harm anyone. What type of message for abused victims is this anyway?

Will's connection was never mentioned again. Even if it did die with the mindflayer, the thing is how did he get them in the first place and why exactly was that the other kids couldn't duplicate them? Why did Vecna take Will anyway? Why not any other kid? Why was Hawkins stuck in the past? And omg what was the purpose of the kids? Why did they never explain how the kids are helping Henry channel his energy? They just shoved the idea in your head but never explained how the mechanism actually works? What was the point of Barbara's death?

The queerbaiting was one of the bad parts. But my goodness the assassination of Mike Wheeler was worse. You couldn't explain his behaviour in s3 and s4 until you literally unlocked his internalised homophobia-

God whatever the fact that Murray played a bigger role than Kali tells you everything you need to know.

Also Mike has the fucking painting in his bedroom wall and yet the lie was never fucking addressed?? Guess he was just a Tammy till the end, who failed to believe Will was dead, who recognised his breathing through the walkie talkie, who hurt his best friend and then further acted weird with him but yet was always very on point to his emotions and expressions in his observation.

I genuinely don't care about actors and their real life. But Finn man you've got some explaining to do with those lip glances and those triple takes and that soft voice reserved for Will.

And if mileven were really endgame why the fuck did he refer her as friends and why were they paired so less? In all honesty they weren't paired together at all.