i've honestly never understood the criticism of el absorbing and adapting things from other people, or the idea that it means she isn’t allowed to be her own person... because to me it just adds even more dimension and texture to her character.
first of all, i think the idea that we all have a 'core fixed self' that's entirely separate from our environments is... not without nuance. while we all possess an innate biological temperament, that's vastly different from there being a fully formed, static "essence" untouched by experience deep within us.
we're all defined by the ways in which we enter into relationship with the world around us... and that includes other people. in fact, many cultures view selfhood as interdependent and deeply embedded in social relationships, rather than as an 'isolated individual'. which makes it, imho, a pretty weak argument from the get go.
secondly, if you've experienced chronic developmental trauma growing up, it's likely that your sense of identity will form differently from that of the average person. for some, this sense of self may never feel fully 'solid' or self-contained, and instead feel less consolidated and more fluid.
that fluidity can mean discovering a lot of your selfhood through other people, and through a continuous dialogue with your environment. and that doesn't mean that "all you are is your trauma". it simply means acknowledging the ways in which that trauma has helped shape your core traits and your preferred ways of relating to the world.
and while there are definitely patterns of behavior and general characteristics you'll outgrow on your way to healing, there are many others that will remain... and there's nothing inherently pathological about that. a lot of traits are neutral and what makes them "healthy" or "unhealthy" is not the presence or absence of the trait itself, but the context, intensity, and function behind it.
i think all of this is exactly what's happening with el: her tendency to mirror those she loves doesn't necessarily "reduce" her to her trauma. it doesn't take away our opportunity as an audience to learn new things about her character, her tastes, and her interests.
in fact, i'd argue that it's the exact opposite: it reveals new things about who she is. it tells us that she's highly adaptable, very attuned to her environment & receptive to other people, sensitive & emotionally responsive, eager to connect with others, and deeply touched by those she loves. she's also someone who's entirely comfortable with reinventing herself, and who enjoys exploring the world with genuine openness. and to me, these are all very beautiful traits!
is trauma a likely explanation for many of them? sure! do each of those traits have a flip side that, when unbalanced or strained, can become maladaptive? absolutely! but why must that make them automatically pathological, as long as they remain adaptive, balanced, and functional?
in el, they seem to be all of those three things. for example, she definitely absorbs a lot from others, but she also rejects just as much. she breaks hopper's rules, adopts kali's style and traits before reverting back to her previous style and mindset, mimics max's 'sassy attitude' without totally assimilating it. she's clearly making conscious decisions as to what to integrate into herself and what to leave behind.
so... tldr: something originating from trauma doesn't make it inherently wrong or dangerous. it also doesn't make it "fake", or some sort of mask slapped on top of a hidden 'true' self (and, again... what does that even mean?).
and as someone who profoundly relates to this aspect of el's character, this particular criticism has never made much sense to me.
anyway, dropping this here. feel free to fundamentally disagree because this is far from a settled debate, but i did wanna give my two cents on it!
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something about will making mike quieter and calmer, while mike makes will bolder and livelier.
will is naturally sensitive and perceptive to his environment, which grants him an unusual capacity to read and translate other ppl's emotions with great ease.
this is exactly what someone like mike, prone to tunnel vision and delayed self-awareness, needs in order to widen his field of perception and reconnect with what he's truly feeling.
mike is naturally someone who bonds intensely, finds genuine beauty in difference, and instinctively affirms those he cares about out loud by celebrating their particularities.
this is exactly what will, prone to quiet self-erasure when he notices he's out of sync with his environment, needs to feel safe holistically unfolding and taking up space.
around will, mike's spirals slow down. he listens more, allows for wider pauses, and adopts a softer tone.
around mike, will's walls come down. he discloses more, fills in more silences, and takes greater risks with his words.
will lowers mike's noise. mike heightens will's signal.
they're perfectly complementary, which makes them all the more compatible.
i love this scene because it captures el's first truly voluntary, self-motivated use of her powers... and what does she do with it? defend someone else.
up until now, she'd mostly been using her abilities for self-preservation or under duress.
here, there's no threat on her own life, nor orders she's been told to follow.
she's simply watching an injustice take place and deciding, on her own terms, that something must be done.
in part, because it's targeting mike – a kid who has shown her nothing but kindness and blind loyalty.
in part, because it's targeting will – a kid she may not know, but who she's just heard mocked and cast out for being different.
and if there's one thing el understands well, it's what it feels like to be punished for being different.
i also love the symmetry of her counterattack. she could've resorted to physical violence, but instead aims for something more fitting: social humiliation. she's taking the weapon troy just used against will, and is turning it right back on him. a clean "you reap what you sow".
it reveals something crucial about el: that her moral instinct gravitates toward justice, not cruelty. she's acting more so out of protective solidarity than out of sheer vindictiveness.
and it also perfectly embodies an idea i've expressed on a past analysis: "despite having spent her entire life being consistently dehumanized and abused, el's a deeply principled and naturally empathetic person. she's fiercely loyal to her friends from the get-go, and very protective of the weak and disempowered."
with all that being said:
i love you, el hopper, you'll forever be THAT girl 💕
ehh idk the more i think about it the more i actually really like will's mike-assigned epilogue. because like. That's The Thing He's Sensitive About. you know? sure, he couldve had an epilogue scene at a gallery for his artwork, or a shot of him in college or running a dnd game for new friends or whatever, but. none of those things actually address what will spent the whole season (and the whole show to an extent) grappling with.
will is gay. and that's really scary for him, because he lives someplace where being gay is taboo at best and dangerous at worst. no wonder he's always been good at hiding. he's spent his whole life in unrequited love with his best friend and getting increasingly bad at keeping it a secret. robin is the first gay person he has EVER met, the first person he's ever truly been able to see himself in in that way. being gay in hawkins is lonely. being will byers, in a lot of ways, is crushingly lonely.
and then mike and the narrative together give will a gift. they say, hey, in your future, you aren't lonely like that anymore. you don't have to hide like that anymore. it's nice, y'know? will isn't spending the show wondering if he's a good enough artist to make it into a career. he isn't worrying about getting into college. so like, maybe his epilogue doesn't say much about his actual future, but i don't mind that. it leaves his life open-ended, which isn't the worst thing, and in the case of stranger things, where their canon answers to questions have so often just been so terrible, i kinda like that they don't make any hard & fast decisions about will's future besides to say: he is secure in his identity, he is somewhere where that can be true, and he is happy.
and i especially like that it's something mike gives to will. 'cause it means that mike is paying attention, and mike, too, knows that the greatest gift he can offer will is to help him envision a future where he can "find his place," where he achieves "deep happiness and acceptance" in ways that, let's face it, he never did, and probably never could, in hawkins.
is it groundbreaking queer storytelling? no, of course not. is the epilogue boyfriend a cheap cop-out? ehh, kinda. but it's not the slap in the face i originally took it for, is i guess my point. it brings will's arc to a close in a way that is surprisingly attuned to what will needs and deserves to hear. he's going to be okay. he's going to be safe, and happy, and accepted. mike says it because he wants it to be true and he wants will to believe it. and then the narrative backs it up, gives us a flashbulb moment of will being safe and happy and accepted, and i dunno. i just think it's what will deserves. i like it for him.
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I have spent the past couple of weeks trawling through jstor and more salubrious sites to try and coherently organise my thoughts on season 1, and I’ve come away, if anything, more uncertain in my own interpretations. One thing that really struck me was the sheer multiplicity of meanings derived from the work. One article views Stranger Things are an inherently derivative work that fails to challenge the audience on basically anything, that entrenches the status quo and reinforces conventional opinions. In contrast, one article holds Stranger Things up as a pinnacle of criticism against the Reaganite era and interprets it as a scathing retort against the economic policies that unfairly targeted non-normative families. One dissertation upholds Eleven as a character that is granted the moral complexity usually reserved for middle-aged male protagonists in prestige TV, while another views her as nothing more than shallow caricature of ET, an empty receptacle for Mike’s childhood fantasies. I’ve seen it praised by queer audiences for embracing the outcasts and challenging normatively. I’ve seen it praised by conservative republicans for decrying the insidious harms institutional overreach in private life. I’ve seen it praised by feminist thinkers and eviscerated by feminist thinkers. Stranger Things as a text appears to have a quality that allows it to be endlessly interpreted in ways that readily contradict each other with little contention.
I believe this is directly due to the referential nature of the work. The show is layered in various homages and references to other works, so much so that it has become typical fare among the fans to find the originating reference of a scene (what what is identified as the source), and analyse the external scene instead. I have been keeping extremely close tabs on the conformitygate tag, largely because the explosion of analysis fascinated me (note re CG: I have been on and off the bus about four times). This style of analysis whereby an examination of an unrelated external text due to its perceived similarities, regardless of intention on the part of the writers, is used as a way to extract meaning from internal scene, is a symptom of a larger desire to find any sort of coherent thematic meaning in the work. Because while Stranger Things alludes to a coherent thematic structure, the subtext of the work is contradictory. Stranger Things struggles to stand on its own under its own merit of internal meaning because it is so reliant on external references. It is more interested in homage than it is in the natural themes that arose from the early inculcation of homages in season 1. This failure show clearly in season 5, where the nostalgia takes on an autocannibalistic effect. Season 5 fails to deliver a coherent story with a coherent theme because the show has always relied on the themes borrowed from its various homages. In season 5, something changes: the origin of the homages turns inwards. The homages are drawn from itself. And like an ouroboros, the story collapses in on itself.
In a way, this self-referential disaster is the biggest tribute to the Reaganite era the show could have managed. Stranger Things’ referential habit of ironically gesturing at other works is a habit, ironically, borrowed itself from the very works it is derivative of. Hollywood in the Reaganite era had crystallised itself. The structure of 80s movies superficially resemble each other in away that is apparent in their easily-recognisable distinctiveness. It was the era of nostalgia, mirroring the cultural desire buoyed by the Reaganite policies that sought to see America return to its more prosperous past. It was the consumerist era, where children were first recognised as autonomous agents of the market, their own separate consumerist class. By borrowing so heavily from media from an era already obsessed with nostalgia and conservatism, Stranger Things struggles to actually develop its own internal, contemporary identity and thematic subtext. The meanings are fractious, multitudinous, which means that the fans have been left scrambling to try and reshape the text into something coherent—mostly, it seems, through the way the same way the show has been constructed, via looking at a more successful story.
(That Isn't Speculation on Mike's Sexuality, Film Colouring, Costuming and Set Design, Millie's and Finn's Lack of Chemistry, or Finn's Acting Choices . . .)
Wanted to get my thoughts down here for future reference as to why I think byler would've closed off Stranger Things well narratively (without being anti-mileven) and also why I had such dissatisfaction with S5. I will argue using the characters, their arcs and the themes present in the show.
Mike
Mike's greatest fear is that the people he loves will leave him, whether due to external forces or his own actions.
His core belief (the lie he believes), however, is that he is unworthy or unloveable if he is not needed by the people he loves. Which is why it frankly mystifies me why both mileven and byler shippers treat Will or El re-affirming this as a positive thing by "needing him more" or "showing Mike he/she still needs him" in their own ways.
When it comes to the ship wars, both Will and El are on equal footing when it comes to challenging Mike’s inner lie. In that they both exacerbate the issue so that Mike doesn’t have to confront this lie. Both trigger his deep fear of being inadequate and losing his friends. Both provoke his imagination, compassion and bravery. Both make him feel desperately needed at first only for them to both come into their own apart from him.
Where I tend to disagree with most shippers on either side is that Will outgrowing Mike or El outgrowing Mike (in that they outgrow some kind of dependence on him) are bad things. Or them failing to do so are good and romantic things (in a narrative rather than moral sense). Both Will and El need to outgrow their codependency with Mike not just for Mike’s character but for their own individual journeys.
El breaking up with Mike after Season 4 would've been a good thing for both their characters. Will embracing his identity apart from Mike is a good thing. Even him, to an extent, moving on from wanting Mike to validate his sense of self via requited love. I don't think that last part is as important as some anti-bylers may deem it, but I do think it works and isn't malicious or homophobic intent on behalf of the Duffers. Especially with how deliberate they were with Will's character in earlier seasons.
So then, what does Mike need if it's not validation? The answer, interestingly, is found in his friends--namely Lucas (I am not purposefully excluding Dustin or Max, I just think these three characters--Lucas, El and Will--have been routinely more central to Mike's development throughout the seasons and Dustin himself has been one of the more sidelined of the core four in the show itself).
The completion of Mike's arc is acceptance. Not just of himself, but of reality. This is why I genuinely believed that the show would've been tighter if mileven really did break up for this exact reason. With or without byler being canon.
Let me elaborate.
El (and Kali)
El’s arc was always going to lead her away from Mike in some sense. That was extremely clear to me by the end of Season 4. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that this was something each season on some level tried to prepare the audience (and Mike) for (with perhaps the exception of Season 3).
Why?
Because El's biggest fear is being confined. She resists confinement on every level, whether emotional, physical or social. It's why it's so heartbreaking watching her come to be, on some level, disillusioned with being part of society. She has discovered new (but familiar) forms of stifling, control and cruelty.
Also, El's core belief (thematic lie) is that she is a monster for being so different and alien. For her foreignness to the town (and broader society) as well as her ability to kill or manipulate things with just her mind. She is strange not just for a kid or a human being, but also for a girl, and she faces a lot of backlash, punishment and unkindness for that.
On some level, it seems cruel to say that El was never going to be able to fit in. Too tragic. But it would be, on some level, equally tragic if she did, because she was never meant to. Her just assimilating successfully wouldn't be a victory for her, either.
I find myself disagreeing with how most of the fandom talks about Kali and El’s ending. The Duffers had always led up to the idea that things would not be as simple for El as they were for Mike.
When it comes to systems of oppression or exploitation, Kali is a fantastically reasonable voice. This is horror and horror is known for its sense of social and existential realism. The demonization of Kali by the majority-white fandom is part-and-parcel of their disconnect from social truths like this in real-life.
Kali is a victim of the same system El is, and thus, has much more authority on the subject than Hopper or El's friends. I don't care how anybody else feels about that (even if yes, they did know El better on a personal level than Kali did). Even while I think the handling of the Dr. Kay and the pregnant ladies plotline was bullshit, we have seen from the Rainbow Room and Hawkins Lab in previous seasons how well-guarded and contained (and trafficked) these kids were.
The tragedy of El's character (as well as what makes her story so interesting) is the juxtaposition between her individual power and the limitations society (and the realities of life) still manage to impose on her. That's the point. That's the tragedy. It is not insensitive to discuss the realities of these things (even though this is a sci-fi and thus fantastical on some level--but it still has to work as metaphor).
People that are so butthurt about the Lost Sister episode and make El's fulfilment Mike-centric are doing so because the metaphor is truly lost on them. Kali and Terry were never vestigial from a narrative standpoint. They are her family, too. And they also love her. Kali not only challenges El's false belief that she is a monster for not fitting in, but encourages (much like Max) El to resist ALL FORMS OF CONFINEMENT. Like holy shit you people, this is not about happy or sad endings or ships! El's full circle moment was always going to be with Kali because of this. Because she had to accept her reality (despite Mike's unwillingness) and also to resist conformity on all levels (choosing a life outside of common society, because that's who she is). She was never going to settle down and have a conventional life, military or no military. Mike or no Mike.
But with much of S5, I think the Duffers had several good ideas that were just sloppily executed due to their own laziness, hubris and greed. El embodying this realism did not mean she had to die. That kind of took it from realism and into the extreme of spectacle. They romanticized the hell out of something that simply needed gravity. Made it melodramatic. Worse, they explicitly show the annihilation of victims instead of perpetrators as the potential solution to exploitation and abuse. Which is . . . it's not even that it's realistic, it's just philosophically stupid. Like if the narrative is trying to argue something, that annihilating victims is how you end abuse, then . . . that's just catastrophically stupid. Yes, it is always going to end up being the responsibility of victims and the oppressed to advocate for themselves (because their oppressors and abusers certainly won't) even if it isn't their fault, but how the genuine fuck does destroying victims do anything but protect perpetrators?
White men shouldn't write lmfao. Idgaf. Get them outtttt of media right now. No more books, movies or TV shows from them! I revoke their license! They are going to spend the rest of the next couple of centuries shutting the fuck up and listening bc this is god-tier bullshit.
Anyways, the world was never going to be easy for El. It was never going to understand her. So she doesn't need it to suddenly become easy or understanding and she doesn't need to belong to it. She just needs to know she is loved and understood by those she loves in order to fight on. To live on as her authentic self. She didn't need Mike to remain her boyfriend or for Hopper to remain her father. Same as she didn't need Terry to "come back" and be her mother. She didn't need them to be her "protectors" or her "guardians" or her "mentors." Or rather, she outgrew these needs at some point. She was never going to perfectly assimilate into a nuclear family structure, and I don't think she needed to. What she needed was time to reclaim that which Dr. Brenner stole from her: love and freedom. She needed to know what love was, to feel the love of those taken from her and to know it was always hers regardless of what happened in her life or where she went. That is what she most coveted from her friends and Hopper.
El is symbolically the magic of childhood, and it makes sense that it is the cruelties of life that take her away from Mike, Hopper and her friends. It is sad, yes, but the message itself isn't negative. It is truthful. Even if the Duffers handled that truth indelicately. In regard to who she is as a character, it makes sense that she is used to explore, like many other characters, the intersections of reality and imagination.
Her's just takes a different path from Mike's.
Will
If El's story is about finding home (and love) in unexpected places and being forced to leave, Will's story is about being forced from home (abandonment, isolation) and then learning to fight his way back. To belong. Will (Staying/Coming Home) and El (Finding Home/Leaving) are parallels in much the same way Mike (Imagination/Childhood) and Lucas (Reality/Maturity) are parallels.
Will's core fear is abandonment and loss of autonomy. The two go hand-in-hand. He was taken from home into the Upside Down, and when he is found and brought up again after doing everything he could to survive down there and come back, he finds that the world he knew is still slipping away from him anyways.
He is an extremely vulnerable character in that he is violated and hunted by the Mindflayer (and Vecna) a lot of the time, and--unlike El--is essentially powerless against them. It makes sense that many of us have trouble drawing clear distinctions between El and Will's arcs because they both center on a sense of lost autonomy and being othered by the world they want to belong to.
But there are key divergences based on their own personal backstories.
The false belief Will harbours is that he doesn't and will never belong and that he's fundamentally powerless against the dark. Something beaten into him by circumstances and the MF over the seasons.
Which is what makes "The Sorcerer" so powerful and cathartic for viewers. Because Will overcomes this false belief about himself and draws power from his difference (not, importantly, his trauma). Vecna didn't give him his powers. He gave Will a window and an opportunity. Will's difference--his acceptance of those differences--gave him his powers.
Interestingly enough, this is why I didn't like about fandom's insistence on elevating Will to be such a prominent player in Vecna's great plan (from the beginning). His involvement with the Upside Down works as something incidental. Will was the kid that was never meant to survive. Who everyone regarded as fragile. Who everyone expected to die. Even in Season 1, his odds of survival when he initially disappears are very much routinely referenced with his homosexuality, which means that people assumed that both his gayness and fragility (and any tragedy that befell him) went together. For it to become his strength later on? Delicious!
Which also brings me to my fixation on Will's favourite song: "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by The Clash. To me, this song reads as a version of the question Will is constantly asking himself when it comes to life on the surface: do I belong here, or do I belong to the dark? Am I part of this life--this world--or am I better off dead? Will people want me around, or do they wish I'd just leave? Am I too different to belong?
Remember, Will has two toxic beliefs that reinforce each other. One of powerlessness and one of otherness. When he accepts himself, his difference, he completes that first arc (even if his newfound strength is yet to be tested against the final Big Bad). But he still doesn't accept that he belongs. Or to put it more bluntly: he needs to make the decision for himself to stay.
Now, I know some milevens have argued that byler being canonized would've usurped Will's arc of finding autonomy and ability within himself. And while I understand that concern, I don't think Will's love being requited jeopardizes Will's arc, namely because the show frames his path to coming into his own power as made possible by love. Mike's (and Jonathan's and Joyce's) love explicitly anchors Will throughout the entire show.
Jonathan's "we're all freaks, it rocks to be a freak" and Mike's "crazy together" don't just encourage Will to merely accept himself, but let him know that he is in the right company. He is where he is supposed to be: with them. Home.
So he chooses to stay there. To not give up on it.
That's why Will learning to embrace his own power is so tied into his learning that he does belong to the surface world. Because there are people that love him there. And they'll never stop looking for him. Stop waiting for him to come out of the dark, and into the light. Who want to know him--all of him.
Will doesn't just love Mike because he's nostalgia-bait or a sense of safety that shields him from the outside world (if anything, he's acutely aware of Mike's limitations in this vein), but because he's pursued Will time and time again, much like Joyce, in order to bring him back, keep him close, to where he belongs. With them.
It's a little funny how both bylers and milevens like to routinely accuse Mike of getting in the way of either El's or Will's growth, when that's not really the truth about either.
Mike doesn't treat Will as fragile like Joyce (much like Mike doesn't treat El as someone to control like Hopper), and so of course he's a fantastic romantic partner for both.
So what does it come down to?
Byler/Mileven
Well. Mike. Mike is the character who the narrative is largely interpreted through, so if there's any ship that's going to make endgame sense (note, this entire analysis is not an argument about who is more compatible), it has to do so in relation mostly to his needs and his relationship to the narrative.
What I think byler shippers tend to get terribly wrong about mileven is that El and Mike stifle each other in some way. Conversely, where I tend to disagree with mileven shippers is that El and Mike's authentic selves were not stifled at all.
The way I see it, while neither Mike nor El perpetuated strict gender norms or even fundamentally misunderstood each other, they could not end up together due to the circumstances (conformity) society ultimately forced on them--something El was far more naturally resistant toward. Most milevens believe that all El needed to do was defeat the big bad military and then she'd happily settle down into a life with Mike in broader society. I disagree! And I don't think bylers are wrong for pointing out that an ideal arc for El would involve her finding further independence.
I disagree with bylers in that I don't think El needed independence from Mike (she never really lacked it?) or that Mike stifled or controlled or mistreated her (or that he wasn't attracted to her, lol). But I do think Mike needed independence from El. I do think that most of the stifling that puts stress on their relationship comes from outside forces, whether society or the MF, and I do think it's realistic that they ended up apart. Because whether or not Mike and El loved each other and were good for each other, El would never have fit in to his world. Or his plans for both of them. It's upsetting, but it's true and is set up time and time again in the text.
Which is why my gripe with S5 was the missed opportunity of handling that eventual transition earlier, more explicitly and while utilizing what other characters were there to have the best of both worlds.
Why Byler makes narrative sense as an endgame ship is that Will's and Mike's arcs kind of lead them toward each other thematically and symbolically.
Think about it: Mike has made his entire personality for the longest time protecting his friends at the cost of himself in order to prove his worth to them (and himself). This includes both Will and El, but they both give him an out. El by firstly emotionally distancing herself in Season 4 and then *rolls eyes* killing herself in the Upside Down in Season 5. Mike has struggled with feeling helpless to stopping these kinds of realities from happening, and yet his arc doesn't lie in him just getting the happy times he wants, but in him finding self-worth in who he is and not what he does. Accepting love even when it doesn't give HIM power to change anything. Even when he thinks he doesn't deserve it.
El is important to this arc because she is the first out he gets to doing the hard work of embracing his own vulnerability and himself (his feelings, his dorkiness, his limitations). Because whether she intends it or not, Mike stagnates in her presence, tying his self-worth into her survival (into whether she stays or leaves). She understands that it will be hard for him while also seeing that it will be necessary to let her go. That he's got to find his own self-worth outside of being helpful or her boyfriend (which as is established by even Lucas, he gets a huge ego boost from). That's why she tells him "I love you" before she kills herself and doesn't mind if he says it back or not. Even if she'd lived, a version of this moment would have needed to happen, still. They would've had to say goodbye.
Will also gives Mike an out, later on, by saving him in the moment where he was previously the most vulnerable in the group. Now Mike's role in his life of protecting him is subverted and complete. Whatever battle against Vecna awaits them by the end of Vol 1, Mike won't be able to step into Will's place and do that work for him. Won't be able to just throw himself in front of the bully or mouth off to them. Whatever happens, Mike is forced to witness Will do the fighting and protecting.
So now that Mike's out of a job (lmao), what's next? Who will he be?
There's nothing left for Mike to be but loved. Himself and loved.
Bylers rightfully point out that there's an element of pretense/hiding Mike does for El where he hides his true emotions (something he's never had much of an issue with when it comes to Will). This has nothing to do with who he loves more, btw. El still knows when Mike is lying because she has extremely high EQ, but she still does unintentionally exacerbate this problem because Mike uses her as an excuse to scapegoat his own insecurities and emotions (and she recognizes this). Does he love El? Yes. Does he also use her as a form of re-assurance so that he doesn't deal with his own problems? Also yes.
So am I then suggesting that Will is where Mike's true authenticity lies? Yes!
When it comes to DnD, we see how not only central the game is to the show, its themes, but also its characters. DnD is a very important metaphor for non-conformity and childhood authenticity for all of the Core Four. However, for Dustin and Lucas, DnD ends up (if you recall S4 especially) being a metaphor for conformity v nonconformity. Whereas for Will and Mike, it centers on childhood authenticity/imagination v reality: "what did you think we would do--play DnD for the rest of our lives in our basement?" "Yeah, Mike. I guess I did."
Now on some level I'm sure this is all starting to sound redundant, and that's because for the most part it is. All of the Core Four routinely swap themes and arcs (Dustin and Mike share a lot of arcs as well as Lucas and Will on several levels). Even the themes are quite similar. Almost exact.
But the conversation on childhood I think is more particular to Will and Mike, the both of whom are scared of the world and their peers leaving them behind in different ways. Dustin fears losing his friends, certainly, and Lucas embraces maturity (even looks forward to it--to moving on and changing), but Mike and Will struggle with the changes that happen around them, wanting to belong somewhere.
I don't, like many milevens, chalk up Mike's resistance to losing El as simply him not wanting to lose the love of his life. Because taking the entire thing into consideration, El is meant to symbolize something more to Mike and the story. The threat of a looming loss of authenticity and joy due to having to grow up. She can be both a symbol and a character in her own right.
So why I bring up DnD with byler is because when it comes to the idea of childhood, the show seems to want to encourage us to hold onto that wonder, even while we face hard realities. The show itself is nostalgia-bait, but it wants us to be nostalgic with our eyes open.
Will literally draws strength from love and the longing for home. From his fondest memories. "Crazy together" is the byler slogan, but it's also the heart in many ways of the show. Sharing struggles and fears and memories and happy moments together. Being weird together. Alone (like Lumax) together. Using our purest memories--especially from our childhood--to draw the strength necessary to face reality. These memories--reminders of love and the authentic self--are the light that beats back the darkness that lurks.
Why Will works isn't because he affirms Mike's desire to be needed, but because he is constantly reminding Mike of who he is: imaginative, brave, stubborn and idealistic. DnD is a symbol of the authentic Mike. Who Mike would be if the demogorgon never came.
El had to leave, but Will chose to stay. Will chose Mike, the same way Mike chose Will all those years ago. Them choosing each other--choosing that joy and authenticity--is the heart of the show. They choose each other in spite of bullies, demogorgons, and monsters. They choose both each other and themselves when they do. It's why it's so hard to separate the two.
If Will draws power from his difference, Mike finds rest in it. He finds peace in knowing that he's loved as he actually is. And yes, while El also affirms that by telling her she loves him, it's pretty clear that part of Mike will always struggle to not be an anxious, hyper-vigilant, self-blaming wreck while she's there--especially because she was always going to have to go on and do hard things.
Mike has a home that he belongs to, and she has her own path, even though for one beautiful moment in time, they shared both home and the road.
Both ultimately embody how Vecna is defeated: through love, through memory, through childhood authenticity and innocence (things Vecna tried to exploit), through defiance and through connection.
El's journey is a little more ironic, in that she defeats Vecna at his own game: non-conformity. She refuses the authority of the world, and she also refuses his authority of his "new and better" world.
It just works.
Anyways, these are my (hopefully well organized?) thoughts on the matter. Maybe I'll make a Lucas, Dustin and Max analysis to go along with this one at some point.
