A Few Thoughts on Will Byers (Stranger Things)

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.

Favorite Characters: Steve Harrington (Stranger Things)

Steve-related spoilers ahead.

This is something I never would’ve thought I’d say back when I watched season 1, but Steve Harrington is kind of great. To me, he’s a prime example of how to redeem a jerkish character in a way that 1) doesn’t feel disingenuous and 2) keeps the character interesting.

When we meet Steve, he’s a quintessential Bad Cool Guy From an ‘80s Movie, the popular boy with glorious hair who turns the head of sweet, studious Nancy. The guy who pushes her toward those things that Good Girls aren’t supposed to do in ‘80s movies, like drink beer and get hot ‘n’ heavy. He’s there in contrast to Weirdo Loner Nice Guy Jonathan, who cares about Nancy and tries to look out for her from afar (creepily – you can’t fool me with that.) And while season 1 takes time to show that Steve isn’t a 100%-irredeemable douchebag, having at least the basic human decency to not want his friends to write graffiti around town calling Nancy a whore, he doesn’t pass anything more than an incredibly-low bar.

Fastforward to season 2, wherein the rehabilitation of Steve Harrington begins. We get a gotcha moment with the reveal that Nancy is dating Steve instead of Jonathan, but it’s short-lived, and when Nancy breaks up with Steve, he has to reevaluate the High-School King image he’s cultivated for himself.

It’s here, when Steve is at his lowest, that the show makes one of its best decisions and brings Steve into Dustin’s orbit. Obviously, we get the most out of Stranger Things characters when they’re involved in the eerie goings-on with Upside Down monsters, and while Steve mostly operates on the ordinary-life side of things in season 1, only brushing up against the supernatural stuff a little, season 2 pulls him into the thick of it. Unexpectedly roped into the most high-intensity babysitting gig ever, Steve perhaps only proves himself quasi-capable but extremely brave and loyal. He’s still getting his feet wet with all this monster business and he doesn’t always know what to do, but he’ll be damned if he lets anything happen to Dustin or the other kids. We see him stick his neck out to protect the kids, and what’s more, we see him taking Dustin under his wing, listening to Dustin about his problems and giving what advice he can.

By the time season 3 rolled around, I was firmly on the “Steve is a good guy now” train, and it doesn’t disappoint. While I still think the groupings in this season are a little too fragmented for my taste, I love everything about Steve, Dustin, Robin, and Erica searching for Russian spies at the mall. It’s an absolute delight, and Steve once again demonstrates bravery and determination if not always a high level of effectiveness.

Shows redeeming “bad” characters is nothing new, both with outright villains (see Once Upon a Time and Buffy, among countless others) and more garden-variety jerks (Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is the first show that springs to mind, but it’s far from alone.) It’s not too often, though, that I see a show pull it off so convincingly. I could point to maybe two or three Steve moments from season 1 where I don’t actively dislike him, but now, I know I’m in for something good basically every time I see him onscreen. It’s an impressive feat, and kudos to the show and actor Joe Keery for making it work.

Favorite Characters: Dustin Henderson (Stranger Things)

Even at the height of the Stranger Things craze when it burst onto the scene in season 1, I’ve always enjoyed rather than adored it. It’s fun, it’s entertaining, and it’s creepy, but I also recognize the places where the plot is clunky and where it trades more on nostalgia points than storytelling. That said, the parts of the show I love?  I love pretty wholeheartedly.  And I definitely love Dustin (premise spoilers.)

The first, and perhaps main, thing to know about Dustin is how unabashed he is.  That’s fantastic to me – I love unapologetic weirdos who don’t feel bad about being themselves because they know how awesome they are, and Dustin fits that bill pretty well.  Even though all four of the boys are major geeks in an era before nerdiness became more mainstream – joyfully reading comic books, playing D & D, and dropping Star Wars/Lord of the Rings references – I feel like Dustin, more so than the others, never considers any of that to be a bad thing.  He doesn’t self-deprecate about it, and when the bullies have a problem with that, he doesn’t try to demure.

He tacks the same tack with his physical disability, albeit with less nerdish enthusiasm.  Dustin (like Gaten Matarazzo, who plays him) has cleidocranial dysplasia, a genetic disorder that affects his skeletal and tooth development.  It’s not something that factors significantly into the show, but I appreciate Dustin’s no-big-deal attitude toward it when his disability comes up in the pilot.  He dutifully shows off his “trick” of making his bones crack to Mike and Lucas, and when the bullies (yep, those bullies again) harass him about his dental plate in season, he simply tells them his teeth are coming in soon and it’s none of their business. Side note: when his teeth do come in, I love how adorably proud he is of showing them off.

But if Dustin is gleeful about his geeky pursuits and nonchalantly open about his disability, he is virtually vibrating with excitement when Eleven shows up at Mike house and a bunch of crazy sci-fi/conspiracy stuff starts going down.  He’s of course thrilled at the idea of Eleven having telekinetic powers and immediately tries to test them by urging her to make a Millennium Falcon model float, and he dives enthusiastically into any and all plans involving Will, the Upside Down, and the Bad Men.  It’s not that he isn’t aware of the stakes, because he very earnestly wants to find Will and he isn’t blind to the danger that’s involved, but even amidst all that, he loves the idea of a real-life adventure and throws himself into it.  And he’s helpful, too – whether it’s working some mad compass fu, doing the awkwardly-annoying job of pestering his teacher on a Friday night for some all-important science details (that said teacher just randomly knows, of course,) or, importantly, bringing the friends back together when tensions run high and it seems like the mission might be abandoned, Dustin is a major asset to the group.

It’s a little odd, because season 1 positions Dustin as kind of the glue of group, but both seasons 2 and 3 separate him to an extent from the other boys and Eleven (and later Max.) The whole thing with Dart comes between Dustin and his friends a little early in season 2 – and his and Lucas’s respective crushes on Max spark a feud between the two of them – and in season 3, Dustin spends the lion’s share with Steve, Robin, and Erica. Not that I’m complaining, really, because the weird burgeoning friendship between Dustin Henderson and Steve Harrington is the best thing to come out of season 2 and I was thrilled to see more of them together in the more recent season. But it is unusual to have Dustin so central to the group’s cohesiveness in season 1 and then see him move into more of a different sphere as the show goes on.

Still, whether he’s in amongst the core kid group or palling around with Steve, Dustin is a keeper, practically everything you want in a good supporting character.  He brings humor, energy, skills, and heart, and he can shine in little moments without needing a spotlight on him.  How could I not love this kid?