Thank you! It’s starting to drive me nuts. Lol. Byler is not dead, they are still in love. They are just dealing with a lot of issues (namely internalized homophobia). Mike was forcing himself to be comp het, but still showed that he loves Will more than anyone in the world - Mike, who usually is petty and holds grudges, immediately accepted blame for hurting Will, apologized repeatedly, and chased him through a storm to apologize again (because he could not stand being off with Will for a minute). Mike would never do that with anyone else. He also loves Will way more than he loves El. He does not trust her, he lied to her repeatedly, he did not want her developing interests/a personality (he wanted her as a blank slate to project Will onto), and after the Byers left Mike did not break over her at all (look at the entire montage, they coded it heavily as BYLER and there was no Mileven at all).
That final exchange with them about DnD is heavily coded towards Will saying that he will never stop loving Mike… and Mike smiled and gave hearteyes because he reciprocates. Also there is hinting towards a Milevill love triangle. My guess now is that Mike misreads Willel as romantic and gets very jealous and sees El as a rival - there have been multiple instances of Mike being insanely jealous when it comes to Will (his whole resentment towards Max in S2 was because he thought Will liked her).
germansingergirl
areudirty
romaincrisis
ellievsbear
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
2087
