Some Will-related spoilers.
Stranger Things kicks off with Will’s disappearance, so while season 1 revolves around the mystery of what happened to him and the fight to recover him, Will himself is more of a figure than a character. We see glimpses of him in the Upside Down and snatches in flashbacks, and we learn about other characters’ connection to him, but it’s not until seasons 2 and 3 that we get more of a sense of the person who was at the center of that mystery.
These subsequent seasons of the show have made me realize just how much we missed out on by having Will AWOL throughout much of the first season. Even if we already knew a lot of details from those earlier glimpses – he loves to draw, he’s bullied because people think he’s gay, he’s a good friend – it makes a difference to actually have him there. And while the Upside Down is far from done with Will after his initial abduction, we know him much better now than we did as the missing kid from season 1.
What I want to look at today, specifically, is the talk and speculation over Will’s yet-to-be-confirmed orientation. Although the show is still dancing around the idea, it’s been dropping hints for a while that Will isn’t straight like the other boys in the group. Like I said, we knew back in season 1 that Will gets bullied for his perceived sexuality, due to things like his sensitivity and his taste in music. These things come to more of a head in season 3, even though the show still isn’t clarifying it – Will gets fed up with the other guys’ constant obsessions with their girlfriends, and in the middle of a heated argument, Mike shouts, “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”
Plenty of fans have jumped onto the Gay Will train, while others speculate that Will just hasn’t caught up to the other boys yet, either because he’s a run-of-the-mill late bloomer or because his trauma in the Upside Down means he’s a little behind in his development. But man, Will’s storyline gives me so many baby-ace feels!
Yes, “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls,” seems to imply that Will likes boys, but 1) it doesn’t have to mean that, and 2) we’ve never seen evidence of that. While the other boys are out here kissing girls or constructing elaborate radios to communicate with their long-distance girlfriends, we haven’t seen so much as a lingering look from Will, directed at anyone. And Will being jealous of Mike, Lucas, and Dustin’s attentions to their girlfriends could indicate an attraction toward one or more of the boys, but it’s framed to me much more as missing their friendship, which is totally ace-relatable. Why is everybody so obsessed with kissing when we could just be playing D&D like we used to? Why does it feel like everybody’s leaving me behind? Throughout season 3, Will’s position relative to the other boys reminds me quite a lot of the excellent Jughead issues #7-8, where Jughead and Archie get into a fight about Archie constantly prioritizing girls over his friendship with Jughead. What’s more, we also get a scene in which Joyce talks to Will about growing up/falling in love, and he very simply replies, “I’m not gonna fall in love.” While that could support a late-bloomer theory, an, “Oh, just you wait, kid!” moment, it could also be Will understanding himself as aromantic and giving voice to it.
I wouldn’t be mad if Will’s gay, but I’d love it if he’s asexual/aro (I’ll only be mad if the series ends with the show still playing coy about it.) We need all the representation we can get, and this would be a story I’ve never seen before for an ace character. It would be a little tricky just because asexuality wasn’t really on most people’s radars in the ‘80s (hell, it’s barely on most people’s radars now,) but I don’t need the word – Varys on Game of Thrones and Raphael on Shadowhunters are both unambiguously ace, and neither of them ever say “asexual.” It would be enough for me to have Will realize, “All this stuff that I see other people being into, it’s not for me and that’s okay.”
We don’t know what future episodes will bring, but in the meantime, I’ll fly my ace flag for Will until the show feels like telling us anything more.
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