Queer baiting in Stranger Things — Will, Robin, Mike and Byler.
Covering @/Obviouslyqueer’s video on YouTube
I got this video recommended to me recently, and after watching it, I was left genuinely frustrated with the creator’s take. This post is a response to that frustration.
I’ll be explaining what I think the creator got wrong, what specifically bothered me and I´ll be offering my own perspective on how Stranger Things handles its queer representation.
This isn’t meant to be hate to the creator! I just wanted to critique her video because honestly, If the creator believes Bylers are in a bubble, I think she should first be willing to step outside her own.
Before we start,
Tw for: fast moving images in a gif/flashing lights
I watched the video fully only once and then just skimmed over it to write this, so I’m probably not going over every point made in the video. I would’ve watched it fully, but if I’m honest, the video annoyed me so much I didn’t want to waste time watching it fully again..
! I’ve never made a post like this before so it might be a bit bad. And really long. Bear with me, please!
1. Set up
At the start of the video, the creator gives a general overview of queerbaiting, history, common examples, and where the line between queerbaiting and queer coding is blurry.
She also establishes a definition for queer baiting, which i will show here because it’s important to the points I will make;
1, first definition she shows 2, second definition she shows
3, her own definition
She also touches on bad queer representation, the fandom fetishization of gay men, and the way corporate media often exploits queerness for profit. Up to this point, I agreed with her. She makes sense and her points are valid, especially in her critiques of companies like Disney, who promise progress and then deliver a blink-and-you-miss-it background moment and call it representation.
But around the 11-minute mark, the video shifts to Stranger Things and that’s where my issues with the video begin.
I’ll be addressing her points in a different order to how she does it in the video for flow reasons, but just for reference this is her order;
2. General problems with the critique
Her video claims to analyze queerbaiting in Stranger Things, but it misses the nuance and complexity of what’s actually happening with the lgbtq characters. It feels like she has little to no faith in the writers, assuming they’re either too cowardly or too clueless to tell a queer story explicitly, even though the show features a canonically lesbian character (Robin). That contradiction alone makes me question about the consistency of the critique.
In her discussion she often forgets to apply the fact that there will be a season 5 to what she says. Season 4 clearly laid down groundwork for Season 5. Expecting every plot thread to wrap up cleanly in Volume 2, when there’s a whole final season to come, misunderstands the pacing of the shows serialized storytelling.
For example, she claims that Stranger Things is “having gay representation at the same time as showing no gay affection and no gay happiness.” But that simply isn’t accurate. Even if you don’t belive in byler, Season 4 is a very clear setup for Robin and Vickie to become a couple in Season 5. There’s affection and joy in their scenes, awkward but affection nonetheless! And thinking general audiences won't pick up on the fact that they will definitely get together in season 5 is actually kinda funny.
The series does have gay happiness and affection. She just completely Ignores Robin’s arc, and Wills happiness at Jonathan accepting him. Plus queer happiness can also simply be letting them be giving those characters attention and care. Which the show does. Hell, Will is a main character if not the main character around whom everything revolves, even if he’s not the happiest, he’s constantly shown to have a loving and accepting family that provides a stable support system.
3. Wills and his sexuality. Queer baiting?
Starting off strong, she says Will’s queerness isn’t “explicit enough,” and that heterosexual audiences supposedly can’t tell that he’s gay.
To that she shows an montage of screenshots to dramatic, and honestly obnoxious music, of “audiences” being confused which clearly are just homophobic or plain dumb people who refuse to acknowledge he’s gay because they don’t want to see it, not because it isn’t there.
(A full minute of this btw and they’re screenshots almost exclusively from facebook and Reddit. Now, I don’t wan to styerotype.. but st Reddit is famously know to be not up to code? And do I even have to explain Facebook..? )
If someone has even basic media literacy, it’s obvious that Will is in love with Mike. Will doesn’t show interest in girls. We have a scene of him being uncomfortable by a girl trying to play footsies with him. We have a scene of him confessing to a guy. There’s nothing ambiguous about the fact that he’s gay. It’s not hidden, (My dad got it for an example, and he has no idea about queer coding. Same with hundreds of reaction YouTubers.) It’s just not spelled out with a neon sign and there’s a reason for that;
There is the historical and in-universe context that she completely ignores. The show is set in the 1980s, which at the height of the AIDS crisis and a time when being openly gay was dangerous, especially in a small-town in America like Hawkins, where he grew up. Will’s fears and internal conflict are not just plot devices; they’re grounded in reality. Saying there’s “no excuse” for him not just coming out directly is, frankly, a shallow reading. It ignores the very real fear queer people lived with during that time and still do.
It would be unrealistic for Will to just say “hey I’m gay” especially because we know his personality. And because we know he worries about losing people because he’s “different.”
The Jonathan and Will scene is a perfect example of quiet, intentional storytelling. Jonathan doesn’t out Will or demand clarity. He doesn’t say “hey I know you’re gay” because he wants Will to be ready and comfortable with telling him. He offers unconditional love and leaves space for Will to come out on his own terms.
Undermining the dedication to making Will clearly and realistically gay as “will being queer coded but not actually ever being said to be gay” is.. missing the point.
Will didnt know his family would support him. He didnt know Jonathan would still love him even if he was gay. But now, he knows. Which also means, it is possible that we will get a proper coming out scene in season 5, but Will as he was before/during s 4, wasnt ready.
She calls Will’s feelings for Mike a “cheap trope" and, yeah, sure in some media it can be lazy writing for a gay character to love their best friend if its just used for angst or queer pain with no payoff. Still, falling for a best friend especially in a time and place where queerness is repressed isn’t just a trope, it’s an honest reflection of how closeted queer love often happens.
Only if the writers go into the direction of byler not becoming canon, making the whole reason of making him gay being to make him suffer more and to use his feelings to serve a heterosexual love story without allowing him any resolution, would it be a cheap trope and in addition to that bad writing.
It would be a betrayal of what the show has been since its start; a show about outcasts and nerds, for outcasts and nerds. I dont really think a show like that would make a gay boy’s (who we are constantly made to sympathise with) suffer only to prop up Mike and Els conventional white heterosexual romance.
What we’ve seen is a slow burn with clear setup for something more, and beautiful. Robin’s characer is proof that Stranger Things isn’t afraid to subvert expectations. Her coming out flipped the “cool girl love interest” trope completely what looked like a traditional romance with Steve turned into something much more interesting and unexpected. Why assume the Will (and or Bylers) arc can’t do the same?
While calling Will’s storyline queerbaiting she also says that while she knows that we still have season 5 and that they can still save it
She thinks that regardless of [..] their portrayal of wills sexuality in season 5 they are waiting until the last season which means that the show won’t lose any viewers by making Will explicitly homosexual.
But that argument ignores some really obvious contradictions. From Season 1, Stranger Things has consistently shown anti-gay bullying as something villainous and cruel. The characters who exhibit homophobia are portrayed as abusers, aggressors, and bad people. If this show were trying to cater to a homophobic audience, it’s doing a terrible job of that from the start.
Not to mention, the show already features a canonically queer character, Robin, whose sexuality is acknowledged on-screen, in dialogue, and in a story arc. The idea that Stranger Things is too scared to risk “scaring away” homophobic viewers falls apart the moment Robin enters the equation.
4. Robin
She clearly has some sort of hatred towards Robin, because the next thing she says is that Robin’s presence doesn’t count the same way because, quote, “lesbians aren’t as scary as gay men.” Like!?? what? That’s not a critique of the show anymore, thats just her hating Robin and repeating an harmful statement with no self-awareness. Queer acceptance can vary according to culture sometimes lesbian women are more socially accepted, sometimes gay men are, mostly neither are. But repeating that generalization as if it excuses dismissing a character’s queerness (or a show’s queer inclusion) is incredibly reductive and irresponsible. It also implies that only the most confrontational representation counts as valid which is a narrow, hostile lens.
I watched her other video criticising how they handled Robin’s representation, calling it “bad” or insufficient because her personality changes between seasons. Of course there is a possibility there was some studio interference to make her different after she, direct quote, "no longer needed to be attractive to the general audience". but there are so many other valid explanations for that: Robin could’ve been masking her true self in Season 3 (which is incredibly common for queer people, a lot of people also see her as neurodivergent), or maybe she became more open and relaxed after developing a close friendship with Steve.
She says the change happens due to her being canonically gay, and that’s a fair concern. But writing off her entire arc as bad representation because of that shift feels shortsighted and doesn’t allow space for any nuance. Not every queer person has to perform their identity in the exact same way across all situations. There’s more than one way to be queer, and not every character needs to be loud or confrontational for their queerness to matter.
5. Mike wheeeler, and actual queer subtext.
She calls Wills writing purely queer coding because he doesn’t explicitly say “I’m gay", and then proceeds to outright refuses to engage with possibility that the symbolism, set design, composition, or dialogue can be intentional storytelling tools for Mikes queercoding because she believes bylers are just in their fandom bubble and it doesn’t mean anything. Im sorry, huh?
She doesn’t want to read actual subtext because she’s already decided it doesn’t exist, which makes the whole critique bias, and not analytical.
She also references gay mike readings like the rainbow imagery, implying she thinks of them as reach. Yet she used rainbows in her own video on the slides she used to signal queerness. So which is it? Is it important queer symbolism or not? The double standard is obvious.
(the SAME rainbows. like, are you kidding me?)
And if most Byler shippers are reading into visual cues, set design, composition, and paralleled dialogue things that are meaningfully even outside of Byler scenes(or even stranger things), how is that delusional? Epically if there’s so much. That’s literally how storytelling in film and television works. It’s called subtext. The very thing she’s calling herself an expert on.
She can acknowledge that the Alan Turing poster is queer coding for will 😭😭 like the writers aren’t stupid, yes the duffers are two straight men but they’re also socially progressive, and don’t write alone. They have a writing team, costume team, directors, set designers, etc, and all of them have lots of time to write scenes, put thought into them, and set them up to film properly. Most scenes take multiple hours to film, like the van scene which took 11.
She, herself, as a“queer subtext expert” denies the possibility that any subtext could exist in Mikes storyline because she thinks bylers are reading into something that isn’t there.
She says, you won’t notice it unless you look for it, and to that I say; isn’t that the point of queer subtext and symbolism? Queer people know more something is up before the average audience does because we looked into the symbolism. Of course Mike being gay Isnt made to be obvious or surface level, because it would kill all the suspense. If we had a scene of Mike yearning for Will everyone would know they’d end up together and the wait from season 4 to season 5 would be a lot less exciting. They’ll lose the whole “will they, won’t they?” Which keeps the Byler and mileven side of the fandom active and speculating.
And might I add, there were no obvious things pointing towards Robin being lesbian during s3, and look how that ended up.
6. Byler
She mentions things bylers have used as proof to disapprove it, which she does poorly.
She says Mike is uncomfortable by Will where he does his triple take because he is realising Wills feelings for him.
But that triple take happens before the heart-to-heart ontop of the car and van scene, where he’s clearly relaxed and comfortable with him. Not to mention he’s comfortable with will for the rest of the season. Why would they write him realising it without showing that? And, how why would he know? There’s nothing indicating that he does.
She claims Will and Mike are growing apart in Season 4, when they actually get closer, and Mike and El’s relationship becomes more distant and strained.
For the airport scene, She says Mike is struggling with toxic masculinity and he can’t hug his friends anymore.
(meanwhile we see him hugging Dustin in the first episode)
Like come on. Its clear that for this section of the video, she tries to dispute byler claims that are thoughtout and deep with shallow and surface level arguments. Mikes relationship with Will is special and different to him, its always been. Even if you don’t see them as romantic you can clearly tell that there is something in thier relationship that is special to both Mike and Will.
She mentions the “crazy together scene” and says that bylers read into something that isn’t there.
But when crazy is used as a word to reference love in the show, even by mike himself, it is not a far reach.
Like holy shit, in no way is it delusion for bylers to assume that that has romantic subtext.
She refers to the “super spy” scene as just "a tender moment between two young boys. Something which is rare to see”
But then she says that; “i know that if Will was a girl in the scene it would be romantically coded"
That’s the issue. She’s reinforcing the very heteronormativity she claims to critique.
She proceeds with saying that its a very necessary critique against the small space that heterosexuals have to move in romance compared to same sex couples. Saying that "heterosexual couples are build up in very different ways and that's just the sad truth so i'm aware that this would be a romantic scene if will was a girl but he’s not and therefore it’s not portrayed as such."
I get that she’s trying to make a point about how queer intimacy is often overlooked or downplayed, and I agree there’s a long history of that in media.
Yes, It’s a sad truth, that’s a product of ingrained cultural norms which should be challenged, not just accepted as inevitable.
She says that if Will were a girl, that scene would be “romantically coded,” and yet because he’s a boy, it’s automatically “just” a tender platonic moment. That’s a double standard. She’s assuming that emotional vulnerability between two boys can’t be romantic unless it follows heteronormative cues and that’s exactly the kind of thinking queer subtext and queer narratives are constantly pushing back against.
The scene she is referencing is romantic coded if you allow yourself to read it that way, especially with season 4, which recontextualizes their earlier scenes because we KNOW Will is gay, establishing that one of the characers like the other one, reading an interaction of them as muttally romantic is not a reach.
By refusing to see the romantic tension just because it doesn’t follow the hetero formula, you’re kind of proving how deeply the system has conditioned you to only recognize love when it looks a certain way. Why can’t a subtle, emotionally intense moment between two boys be enough for you to at least consider that it could be romantic?
If you’re going to criticize the limited space for queer expression in media, you also have to challenge your own assumptions about what romance is allowed to look like. Otherwise, you’re just reinforcing the same norms you’re trying to call out.
7. The hypocrisy + my own opinion
Its frustrating is how loosely and hypocritically the term queerbaiting is used in the video. The definition she uses doesn’t apply to Will. Calling Will bait, simply because they didn’t make it explicit enough for her, while giving Byler a pass makes the critique feel arbitrary and contradictory. Her logic falls apart the moment she disregards her OWN defintion.
I think you already got what i think, but just to make it clear:
Mike: queer coding
Wi: shown to be Gay, which is not queer baiting
Byler: by her own definition, queer baiting if not made canon.
She also leaves out the part of the definition that states queerbaiting happens when creators try not to "alienate homophobic members of the audience." For some reason, she cut it out on purpose. But Stranger Things already alienated those people long ago. It made Robin a canon lesbian, it made anti-gay bullying a major theme, you get it. If this show were really terrified of offending homophobes, it wouldn't have done any of that.
And, if byler isn't endgame the duffers shoulve dismissed it a long time ago. But Netflix and it's affiliates have been explicitly fuling the flame. Queerbaiting. The byler fandom is HUGE, and it wouldnt be if not for the clues in the writing, queercoding and subtext which leads to the strong believe it'll become canon. It keeps even more people talking about the show, which equals more views and more money. QUEERBAITING!
(screenshots from this video)
Not a very good look if they dont end up together, right?
8. Final thoughts
Some of her broader points about queer representation and baiting are valid, there's a real issue in media with queer characters being sidelined or used for tension. But this video flattens everything into negativity. It refuses to engage with nuance, character context, or the historical setting of the show. It dismisses subtext outright while failing to see the very queerness in front of her. And above all, it underestimates an audience that is more than capable of reading between the lines.
Faith in subtext doesn't mean blind trust, it means understanding that subtlety is sometimes necessary, and even powerful. Queer stories don't always look the way people expect them to. That doesn't make them lesser. And it certainly doesn't make them bait.
In the end, her argument doesn’t leave room for multiple truths: queer stories can be subtle and still meaningful, creators can fumble in some areas while doing well in others, and not everything has to be spelled out in block letters. For her, Everything is either “not enough” / “should’ve been more explicit ,” and that black-and-white lens does more harm than good.
Closing note
Been holding off posting this cause I’ve been anxious .. but i mean yolo 😭😭just wanted to share my thoughts on this, thought it might be interesting to read
I don’t expect many people to see this, especially not to read it all trough, but if you did, thank you! I’d appreciate retweets and/or comments / your personal opinion on this!! im open discussions on this :)
credit to @teambyler posts and his video! Referenced some of his stuff it’s great, go check it out
Especially with volume twos clear set up for a possible romance between the two and it being dragged out to the very final episode, byler is now officially queerbait. Good job duffers
