#the grondwork

i’m putting “problem” in quotation marks because i don’t think it’s a problem at all, but it’s something that would make it hard for the general public to notice that a character arc exists in the first place. I’m saying this because I also had the same problem and I only saw the light when I came to the Byler tag and started putting 2 and 2 together. 

I’m talking about continuity through seasons. This whole time I failed to realize what Mike’s character arc was and most importantly I failed to see that it was in developing through seasons without reaching an ending. 

I only started wondering what was going on with Mike in S4, when his weird behavior with Will made it obvious that there was something and it wasn’t just a teen being a teen, like I assumed in S3. 

And still it took me so long to figure out that his weird behavior is not something that came out of nowhere in S4, but it’s actually something that they have slowly built up through the seasons. That no, Mike’s queer character arc hasn’t magically started in S4, but has been going on from the start and that we got it very much presented to us in S3, both for Mike and Will. For Will it was “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls” and the destruction of Castle Byers, for Mike? Hands down the ending of S3. 

My biggest mistake going into Mike’s character, contrary to Will’s, has been to assume that all his arcs started and ended in the same season and that there was no continuity with it, because I was too blind to realize that there was some place they were going with him and that they had yet to reach. I don’t even know why I didn’t realize, Mike is literally our MC, he starts off as our protagonist, if anyone had to have a character arc it would be him?? So why did I just take his character at face value? Istg I feel so stupid right now.

I’ve been waiting for Will’s character arc to take center stage, I knew his queerness was going to be a focal point for him sooner or later, but Mike’s changes completely felw me by because the Duffers never made them obvious. It’s all in the details, and if you’re too taken by Mileven, you’re bound to miss (or dismiss) them. 

For example, when the end of S3 happened, I assumed that the reason why Mike made that weirded out face after El kissed him and told him she loved him was because he was just taken aback that she had heard him confess in the first place and nothing deeper than that. Perhaps it was a bit exhagerated for confusion, but, again, I assumed it wasall for laughs. S3 treated the whole Mileven relationship very lightely and humorously, so it made sense to me that even such a scene would be a bit comical. 

S4 forced me to reconsider everything. 

Rewatching it now, knowing how Mike is behaving 6 months later, that scene takes a completely different connotation and meaning. A lot of similar occurrences do. 

The Duffers have done this before, multiple times. Think Jonathan and Nancy in S1, for example. Their story begun in S1 but by the end of it, Nancy was still actively in a relationship with Steve and the consequences of the time she spent with Jonathan only “hit” in S2. There was continuity there. It was just way less flashed out, it all happened pretty fast although spanning two seasons and it was way more in our face. 

Mike and Will? Have been built up for 4 seasons. From the very start. In the slowlest way possible. In the tiniest details. Their storyline has been constructed one moment at a time, hidden, almost, in the background, but there nonetheless. 

Putting all the pieces together I can clearly see the picture now. I assumed it was just Will, I never really expected Mike to have a character arc per se. I assumed we knew all we needed to know about Mike, I was never expecting any big revelation or anything. But now I can see that his character arc has been going on for 4 seasons and has yet to reach completition, just like Will’s AND El’s (independence arc). 

There IS something going on with Mike. There has always been. I just couldn’t see it until they made it pretty obvious in S4. Some people still think it’s nothing but it was immediately clear to me that they were trying to tell me something when they decided to 1) bring up Will’s feelings for Mike when they could have made it puppy love and give him another love interest 2) have Mileven have ILY problems when the whole audience assumed that was solved at the end of S3 3) have Mike be extremely conscious of Will’s presence for no apparent reason. 

The fact that Mileven are STILL dealing with a problem they introduced in S3 that we all (at least the general audience) assumed had been solved by the end of it is telling us that whatever storyline had been going on in S3? Is STILL ongoing. No, the issue wasn’t closed there. Mike’s character arc didn’t find resolution there, in fact, in hindsight, I could say that’s where his character arc actually properly started. Not to say that nothing happened before then, but I think that’s when he was hit with some kind of realization. 

So the more I look at it, look at the big picture without dividiving the story in seasons, the more I realize that there can’t possibly be anything but Byler at the end of it all. I’ve been saying this since I’ve watched S4. The decisions they took with the story were too deliberate, they can’t lead anywhere else, but I was still 50/50 because I felt like they took it out of nowhere for Mike. But if you put his whole experience into perspective and not divide it into seasons, it’s actually all right there. 

It’s hard because we get years of pause between seasons and the ending of one season stays with us for a long time before we question it so it all feels way more dragged out than it really is in the show. Plus details get lost in time and the Duffers were EXTREMELY delicate with it all. Will’s sexuality included. I picked up on it early but I know for a fact that most didn’t. It was never explicit, it was all very gently introduced. I just never realized they had done the same for Mike. 

I don’t know what Mike’s sexuality is and I’m not even gonna argue (I headcannoned him as bi for a while but who knows) but from a writing perspective, I know that the only possible and logical conclusion of his character arc is Byler. 

I’m so confident in them being endgame at this point that it’s scaring me. It just feels so obvious now, I can’t unsee it. HELP. 

Istg S4 was more about Mike’s feelings for Will than it was viceversa. We got Will’s pov but the real source of their tension was Mike the whole time. He initiated it all. He knows he has feelings for Will and he doesn’t know what to do with them. He’s a queer mess. I just know it for a fact at this point. It just makes SENSE.