Mike having a Jack Kerouac picture on his wall (placed above Will’s painting), is extremely significant and telling here btw.
Jack Kerouac was a novelist who’s most famous work is On the Road, a novel about a young writer, Sal Paradise, chasing freedom, meaning, and identity by crisscrossing America with his charismatic best friend, Dean Moriarty.
Kerouac is so often read through a queer lens, On the Road deals with suppressed desire, intense male bonds, and feelings that don’t fit neatly into what’s expected; and that mirrors Mike’s emotional arc really well.
Mike is deeply attached to Will in a way that’s quieter, more complicated, and often buried under denial or confusion, which lines up with the idea of repression.
Placing Kerouac’s image literally above Will’s painting feels symbolic: Will’s feelings are out in the open through art, while Mike’s are layered under references he might not even consciously understand yet. It suggests the D*ffers/set designers could be hinting at an internal journey for Mike, one where his connection to Will might be more than he’s ready to admit, echoing Kerouac’s themes of unspoken longing and self-discovery.
will byers rant
Will’s ending in stranger things was very upsetting to me, not because I hate mileven or because byler didn’t happen but because it is such an old story. The story of gay people just having to accept themselves and expect that their love is unrequited because it’s the 80’s. It’s not new and it’s not good representation. Will is the only one without a partner throughout the show. Even if they didn’t want to do byler they could have easily given him someone else, but instead they gave him an unnamed epilogue boyfriend who only appeared for a couple seconds just to make people happy.
Also they could have easily made it clear from the beginning that Will’s feelings were unrequited. Instead the Duffers messed with us making Will ask things like how obvious the signals were. This very obviously implies that there were signals or at least a change in him and Mike relationship, if u compare it to how Will saw there relationship is season 4. They however didn’t acknowledge this at all and passed it off as nothing.
I also feel bad for Noah because he fought so hard for Will and good queer representation and was just brushed off. You can tell by what he’s been saying in interviews that he’s not happy with the duffers