#kitkat answer

i know this is a contested idea in the fandom. there are arguments to be made for mike knowing how he feels by s4 — his nod in the “sometimes it’s scary to open up like that” sequence is one that comes to mind immediately — but this is what i think! and i’d be happy to expand more on any point if anyone is curious :)

i know we all know what happens in the episode, but just to recap— it’s definitely true that SOMETHING is going on in his head that’s not “wow i love her!”

as you said there’s his “face journey;”

the open closet;

his avoidance before the kiss;

the fact that he doesn’t say he loves her back;

the (possibly fake) script where mike is shown thinking something to the effect of “what the hell just happened?” after their kiss;

the way he collapses into will’s hug;

the shot zooming in on him as the byers drive away while the words “lately i’ve been feeling distant from you. like you’re pulling away from me or something” are read;

the next shot he’s in where hopper reads “if i’m being really honest, that’s what scares me. i don’t want things to change;”

and the way he hugs karen when he gets home (“…to turn back the clock. to make things go back to how they were”).

but i don’t think any of this necessarily means that he’s realizing he doesn’t love el and is actually in love with will. a lot of it — like the closet — is very subtextual and doesn’t necessarily represent mike realizing that he’s gay at that moment, even if it is indicative of his queerness. mike (and the rest of the wheelers) is shown repeatedly to not like two things: changes and lies.

on the topic of lies: he gets upset when any characters lie to him, to each other, or to themselves. he’s the one who first said “friends don’t lie.” among other examples, he gets extremely upset so with hopper for lying in s2 and is angry with el (and will) for her lies in s4. in s3 when hopper forces him to lie about his nana, it’s very obvious that he’s consciously lying, is not good at it, and doesn’t want to be doing it.

and on the topic of change, he gets upset in s2 when his parents try to make him get rid of his old toys and when the other boys try to invite max into the party he gets irrationally angry. (we can discuss why he did those things ad nauseam without reaching a conclusion. but it’s irrefutable that he liked things the way they were.) this is also subtextually expressed by the aforementioned “if i’m being really honest, [ie not lying] that’s what scares me. i don’t want things to change.”

so mike is a guy who doesn’t like being lied to, doesn’t like lying, and wants things to stay the same. okay, awesome, we knew that already. but how does that relate to this scene and his behavior in s4?

whatever your perspective on milkvan vs byler, it’s undeniable that both el and will are very important to mike. his girlfriend and his best friend, both of whom he has lost and believed dead at least once in the past two years, are now moving across the country. this is a really big change and obviously something that he would be upset about.

if we’re going down the “hopper’s quotes are insights into mike’s psyche” route, which i think is reasonable, this interpretation makes sense too. he “[doesn’t] want things to change,” and he wants “to make things go back to how they were.” obviously it can’t say textually “i’m realizing that i don’t actually love you” because that wouldn’t make any sense and would ruin the suspense in s4-5, but it does place mike in this time of “i want things to be simpler, like how they used to be, before my feelings were complicated” not “i want things to change even more drastically and break up with my girlfriend.” he doesn’t want to think about his blossoming inability to be both a good boyfriend to el and a good friend to will; he wants to go back to a simpler time. (which i’m aware doesn’t necessarily conflict with him knowing his sexuality! i think at this point in time, though, it makes more sense for him to be, as lizzy mcalpine says, “pushing it down and praying.” if you don’t think about it, it’ll go away.)

back to the idea of both will and el being gone at the same time, which before in the show has only happened very briefly (and debatably s2. but whatever) is going to be very stressful to mike. whether you think he’s conflicted about “missing will more than el” or not, it’s also reasonable that he is in shock about how different his life is going to be without either of them in it. i would argue that the experience of having a major life event end and being unable to do anything about it besides stand around with a slack expression on your face is pretty universal.

and i’m not saying that mike can’t also be really distressed about why kissing el feels maybe not how he’d like it to or anything of the sort! but to me the big takeaway from that scene is how hopper’s letter coincides with the belief that mike himself has been pushing for the entire season— “we’re not kids anymore.” mike is being forced to realize that the thing he’s been pushing on (mostly) will all summer is actually coming true.

now this is all very compelling and i’m sure you’re nodding along and thinking “okay kat this is great but nothing you’ve said actually contradicts mike realizing he’s gay in s3.” that’s because my main issue with this interpretation of mike isn’t his anti-change trait, it’s his anti-lying trait.

before s4 came out, i also thought that the s3 epilogue was mike’s gay awakening. but i think it does him a disservice to say that he would be okay with acting the way he does towards will and el in s4 if he actually knew the reason behind it!

mike has had no problems challenging others on either important or unimportant topics throughout all four seasons of the show. obviously being gay is a little more controversial than, say, yelling at his family at the dinner table, but i think that if he was aware of his sexuality, he wouldn’t have a problem telling people who care about him who he knows are safe. he might feel like a nobody next to el, or he might feel unneeded, but he doesn’t feel like “a black hole” or “a mistake” specifically because of his sexuality in the same way that will does.

he doesn’t feel like he is enough for el, but he doesn’t like feeling that way. his inability to say he loves her demonstrates his awareness that he doesn’t. has no problem demonstrating affection when he genuinely feels it (“you saved us, do you understand? you saved us;” “well, if we’re both going crazy…” etc) so i don’t think that his hesitance to say he loves el comes from being scared of losing her. (obviously. hello byler nation.) at the same time, for the same reasons, i don’t think he would stay in his relationship with el if he knew that he literally could not love her romantically. he knows that something is wrong in their relationship, but he thinks that if he continues on the path of trying to love her he will be able to eventually. his eventual acceptance of lying in his monologue to el — with will pushing him into it — implies that he is still hoping for this relationship to work out, (if you tell everyone it’s true, it will come true!) which i don’t think meshes very well with the perception of him being completely aware that he does not and will not ever love a girl romantically.

i think being gay would be no exception to mike “i’m the only one who cares about will” “i don’t know why i didn’t just tell you, everyone at school knows” “this is total bullshit” wheeler’s general philosophy. (within reason of course! i am aware of the culture of the 1980s.)