uhh what do you mean tangled is on the board? is Mike supposed to be Eugene and Will Rapunzel?? Eugene's vest is blue while Mike's primary color is blue, and Will's primary color is yellow just like Rapunzel's hair is golden??? this is so sweet 😭🙏
edit: oh FUCK the flower SHIT
i can’t bring myself to believe byler isn’t happening because wdym they’re paralleled to eternal sunshine, no way home, the truman show, and tangled IN SEASON 5 ALONE.
You can end the cycle El! You don’t have to kill yourself to release yourself from the trauma of abuse!
Kills herself
Look for these signals! Complete these steps! You can love yourself AND be loved! You’re not “different” and you WILL fall in love!
Literally nothing happens
You’re the heart! You ARE needed! You don’t have to become your father and mope around for the rest of your life!
Take a wild guess
i already posted this on byler nation but the more i think about it, the more this genuinely makes sense so i’m posting it here as well. i also just wanted to expand on my point. sorry if any of this is incomprehensible.
during the coming out scene, will watered down his love for mike to a mere crush after suddenly going from having hope of reciprocation, to then accepting that mike was “just his tammy” after something happened.
which is similar to how robin was acting here. she went from having hope that vickie could reciprocate her feelings, to then having that hope get squashed by seeing her with her boyfriend which causes her to essentially give up. but in the end, the two share an interaction that changes her mind.
her saying “i don’t care” was obviously a way of her trying to convince herself she didn’t. despite there being signs to contradict it, we’re ultimately made to think that vickie never really reciprocated her feelings, and that any chance of them possibly having a relationship is over at this point. but it’s then made clear an episode later (the final episode, mind you), that robin does still care very deeply and she still wants vickie — and vickie does reciprocate her feelings.
this feels especially significant when you consider the rovickie and byler parallels.
I’ve said this before in a reblog but I want to post it again on its own: Will calling Mike his Tammy is so Byler proof it’s insane
- We don’t see him come to this realization. Wills love for Mike is the majority of his arc this season. He is dealing with a) self acceptance b) coming out and c) romantic love, as set up by Robin in ep5 as the steps to take. So why not let us see the big moment where Will can finally move on from being in love with Mike? Getting over Mike is a MAJOR thing to happen to Will. If that’s really what we’re expected to believe, then why not show it? Because it didn’t actually happen. What did happen was Will got caught by the guy who manipulates you and messes with your mind and had his mind messed with in a way we haven’t seen yet. The switch up from “I intend to date this boy I’m in love with” to “he’s a silly crush and I’m over him” is so sudden and jarring, which is why it feels like byler won’t be happening when you first watch it, but it actually sets up that there is more to cover. Leaving out such a big part of Will’s story means they have to continue the plot line. If it were all wrapped up with a neat little bow before the last episode then there would be nothing more to cover and no reason to revisit the plot line. But there’s still more. And they’re saving it for the finale because it is the finale moment.
- He said it out loud. He said directly that Mike is his Tammy. A reference that only like two people in that room would understand. It was not necessary for him to verbalize that Mike was his Tammy or be so convinced that Mike was straight. This could’ve been subtext - Will could’ve just said he had a crush but he’s over it. But he said the quiet part out loud. This is how you set up a contradiction, because what else is there? A confirmation plot line? To be like yeah Mike IS straight! Well done Will! We finally verified something that no one in the show was questioning! And this show especially LOVES proving people wrong when they are most certain about something.
- Will isn’t decentering Mike from his arc. By saying “I had a crush but he’s not like me” instead of “I realized I don’t need him/I didn’t love him as much as I thought” the focus is put on Mike. This is another contradiction set up. And it confirms that Will isn’t over Mike because the implied statement is “if he were like me, I would still want to be with him. It’s only because I think he’s straight that I’ve given up”. And we can’t forget that Will had hope. Even after the devastation of the s4 finale, he was asking for advice to see if Mike was interested in him. He didn’t lose this hope after Robin’s speech. He lost it after Vecna. And because they decided to withhold Mike’s pov more than ever, this emphasis on Mike has to be the build up to a big focus. It’s up to him now.
Anybody think that the Duffer Bros article about "representing unrequited crushes" is a red herring to hide a Byler twist in the finale? Like how they had Noah lie about Will's sexuality before S4 V2?
Because they aren't entirely lying - the scene did show Will accepting himself despite having what he believed to be an unrequited crush. We just don't have explicit confirmation that it really is unrequited. And they are keeping their wording on Mike's reaction suspiciously vague - that he finally realized he was Will's crush in that moment. Nothing more than that. They aren't shy about debunking misinterpretations- they did it for Jancy. And assuming someone's sexuality feels so against the message of Stranger Things.
That statement also debunks most GA theories about Mike being weird around Will in S4 and S5 V1 - it's now confirmed Mike was oblivious through the whole show.