#harrypottergate

(this is an excerpt from another of my posts linked here)

i went back and watched snl again to look at the content as objectively as possible and there are few things i’ve noticed about the structure of the sketches/the show as a whole

obviously there is the ‘finn playing queer characters’ running theme, but it is really exaggerated. like a lot. i’m not saying anything that people don’t already know.

what interests me is the ron and harry skit. ignore the gay overtones, they’re the distraction. more importantly: why choose ron and harry over, say, drarry which is way more popular and known? why harry potter at all?

harry potter was used by the duffers to parallel mike and will. in the chamber of secrets, ron and hermione reunite awkwardly, like mike and will do in s4 e2. ron and hermione end up being endgame. harry potter himself has nothing to do with it, but in goblet of fire, rita skeeter somehow misconstrues hermione and harry as lovers and broadcasts that to the news: this brings to mind lucas calling mike and jane lovebirds to which mike and jane look surprised/unflattered by. in deathly hallows, ron is jealous of harry and hermione due to the influence the horcrux has on his mind, bringing out his worst tendencies even though the jealousy is unfounded. cursed objects/pieces of an evil soul showing the individual their worst fears to gain control over them—this has the mindflayer written all over it.

not only does the mindflayer possess henry creel through a cursed object (the random rock), that rock is potentially a piece of the mindflayer which makes it EXACTLY like a horcrux. i also make this parallel to vecna showing will awful things in his trance when he catches him at the end of s5 e5. we never get to see what he apparently shows him, but *apparently* he shows will being rejected by his friends and family for being gay which is what prompts him to face his fears and come out. but this parallel also indicates a level of control that the mindflayer and vecna have over will, hence the fabricated memories will recalls in s5 e7. horcruxes fuck with perception.

this parallels will to ron being jealous of hermione/mike with harry/jane.

so what’s up with the ron and harry sketch? and why does finn play harry instead?

let’s look at another parallel made with harry potter in stranger things: vecna/ the mindflayer as voldemort, and will as harry potter, explicitly paralleled through their mind being linked and, what i’ve interpreted, implicitly through harry potter being voldemort’s horcrux, and will being vecna’s vessel and if our theories are correct, the bridge between dimensions. this suggests that for vecna to die, will also has to die, but also that will can be brought back to life. this would parallel ron to mike (as harry/will’s closest friend) and hermione to eleven, which allows for mileven to be canon. this also means the heated wizadry sketch parallels byler rather than mileven. yet it is ‘eleven’ who dies in season 5 and is ‘brought back to life’, so to speak, in mike’s imagination. and still, finn is playing harry, who he’s never been paralleled to, so something STILL isn’t adding up.

mike is paralleled to hermione, then ron, then harry potter, in chronological sequence. the first two parallels have basis in the show, the last is part of the sketch. jane and will are harry and hermione, interchangeably and will is ron in the show AND the heated wizardy sketch. obviously these are not one to one parallels. but only ONE parallel lies solely outside of the show and that is mike paralleling harry potter.

beyond the horcrux/mind connection between harry and voldemort, there is the fact that they are foils of one another. harry’s mother saved him with the power of love, whereas voldemort (tom riddle) was born out of manipulation/lack of love: his mother drugged a human to get him to ‘fall in love’ and have a child, tom was then abandoned in an orphanage and was an outcast before he went to hogwarts, causing him to grow up to be a supervillain, in the most basic terms. harry grew up also as an outcast but gained friends at hogwarts, yet the two of them have very different lives. both are even halfbloods. two sides of the same coin, yet total opposites. the central theme of the narrative, the thing that divides them, is the power of love.

let’s look at mike and henry. both middle class white family upbringings. similarly detached upbringing with harmful father figures. both have a little sister who is paralleled to alice in wonderland. both have a childhood ‘love interest’ (eleven and patty). However, henry steals holly to be a vessel not unlike how the mindflayer and brenner stole him. this appears to be where the stories differ.

HOWEVER. consider the mike/holly parallels.

holly and mike are paralleled through both of them having friendships and core memories in the basement which we see in holly and max’ first attempt to escape camzotz. in that memory, they have to go through the basement shelf to reach the next memory. next, they are paralleled wby max saying holly is not like mike but is mike. ‘you ARE mike’, she says when holly leads her through the cave’s exit which is shaped like an ‘m’. ‘m marks the spot’ is how holly finds the mine shaft where they can escape through vecna’s memories instead. the letter ‘m’ is on mike’s binder in the epilogue with the EXACT silhouette of the cave’s exit, and the binder is then placed on the same shelf holly and max had to crawl through to escape camazotz. holly then rushes down to play dnd with her friends as the DM, paralleling mike, yet again.

this makes mike=holly, and if holly parallels will being taken in season 1, then mike=will, and if will is a foil to henry, then so is mike.

karen wheeler almost died protecting holly. that parallel’s lily’s death protecting harry potter. if holly=mike, then this applies also for mike. it’s the power of love, yet again.

this makes MIKE the key to killing vecna and defeating the mind flayer. not will. not jane.

that is the missing piece of the puzzle, the part of the story we haven’t seen yet.

(and mike’s fuckass glasses in the epilogue? got harry potter written all over it)

byler forever 🫡

(here’s what i’m predicting: it’s the final rotation of character parallels, except, will and jane have already fulfilled their parallels. i think the next rotation is mike as harry potter, lucas as hermione (recall her timeturner in the prisoner of azkaban being crucial to the plot, recall the lucas jumping timelines theory), and max, bedbound in the infirmary, as ron.)

(also, the mike and henry parallels build henry’s character up so much. henry wanting to take holly first because holly reminds him of his younger sister. henry choosing to harm people close to mike—will, karen, holly, even ted—but not mike (yet, at least) makes it seem personal. consider bobgate as true creelby being bob and henry rather than patty who is the mindflayer, and consider mike, holly, karen and ted being paralleled to the creel family. nancy has no equivalent therefore she is not targetted, but henry warns her that her entire family will be. henry is forcing mike to conform just like he had to, he’s continuing the cycle of conformity and suffering because henry has been hurt by it too.)