Neurodivergent (Headcanon) Alley: Will (Fire Island)

*Will-related spoilers.*

Okay, I know I’ve already written about my autistic interpretation of Mr. Darcy, and as a modernized reimagined Darcy, Will can easily be grandfathered into that post. But I rewatched Fire Island recently, and it left me wanting to talk about Will in his own right.

Because my god, he’s just so wonderfully autistic! From the first moment we see him onscreen, we see that social cues aren’t his forte, but that his misreadings are often assumed to be snobbishness. He and Noah meet when Noah tries to rope him into helping him escape from the unflattering attentions of a determined rice queen—Noah turns down the guy’s offer to get him a drink, insisting that his “boyfriend” Will is handling that. But Will very honestly says he doesn’t know what’s happening. Noah, who’s quick and sharp in social situations, doesn’t see a shy, uncomfortable guy who’s bewildered at being called “honey” by a stranger. He just sees a fellow Asian American hanging him out to dry as Noah tries to extricate himself from the lame dude who’s exoticizing him.

During the afterparty at the beach house, Charlie is sent to go find Will, who’s off “hiding” during the big chaotic social situation, and when Charlie finds him, Will wonders why he even had to come on this trip. Then there’s the Alice Munro scene, where Noah browbeats the taciturn Will into having more than a monosyllabic conversation. As Will disagrees with some of Noah’s literary opinions, Noah wants to know why they’re arguing, but Will doesn’t even realize an argument is happening.

Will is pretty quick to realize that his first impression of Noah was wrong, and to an extent, he gets that Noah hasn’t exactly warmed to him. He doesn’t fully know why that is, though—he doesn’t know that Noah overheard Will calling him “not hot enough to be that annoying” and is later crestfallen to learn that Noah heard what he said. And even more importantly, he really doesn’t know how to fix it. He tries in various ways, without much success. He offers Noah a water bottle for Howie after he gets sick and gets called out for single-use plastic waste. He talks with Noah about Alice Munro, thinking they’re having an interesting discussion about literature when Noah thinks they’re arguing. He tells Noah where his friends went when they leave the underwear party. And of course, after he realizes Noah heard his insulting remark at the afterparty, he writes a letter to apologize, additionally trying to offer what context he can for his warning about Dex. A lot of Will’s fumbling attempts to smooth things over with Noah involve giving him information, as if things will be all right if he can just explain himself sufficiently—big autistic mood!

I’ve said that Conrad Ricamora is 100% a Colin Firth-level Darcy, and it’s really true. So many tiny moments of Will’s characterization come together to deliver peak Darcy-ness, and the autistic coding is a major part of that. When he’s forced into playing Head’s Up with the five “sisters,” you can physically see the panic in his eyes as Keegan and Luke scream at him about Marisa Tomei, after which he shrugs off Charlie’s attempt to reassure him. He goes to the underwear party (in shorts,) still wearing his watch and standing on his own in the corner. After he insists that he’s a fun guy and Noah volunteers him for a dance-off, the drag queen emceeing the contest initially thinks he’s cute but soon starts laughing at his stilted, one-word answers to her questions, suggesting that he’s a robot. He gets awkward and nervous about being perceived too closely—when Noah lightly teases him about eating a tiny ice cream cone, he chucks it away, then claims it was melting. Oh my god, I love it so much!