Stranger Things Season 5 (2025)
by Robin Fleury-Steiner
Stranger Things Season Five’s protagonist Will Byers proved that while you can defeat mind-bending monsters with the power of friendship, you cannot escape cliche cringe and performative diversity. The first volume of Season Five (episodes 1-4) revolves around the group’s preparation to fight the all-powerful monster, Vecna, who takes advantage of the most psychologically vulnerable. The character of Will, one of the four original party members and the show’s main magnet for supernatural threats, keeps his role as a professional victim and Vecna’s prime target. In volume one, it’s implied that Will is gay and in love with his best friend, Mike. However, Mike has a girlfriend and increasingly neglects his friendship with Will. This story line is not only redundant but exhausting to watch, as the show's only implicitly gay male character acts as the damsel in distress who is chasing after the unattainable man who treats him like shit. At the end of volume one, this stereotype is only amplified as we watch Will tap into his strengths only when his forbidden lover is in trouble. Nothing says character development like requiring a crush to motivate you to fight for your life.
In the second volume, the writers use Will as a plot device. Will eventually comes out as gay, which the writers included to amplify the idea that it's okay to be different, yet they reduced him to his sexuality and overlooked the rest of his story. The writers fell for tragic queer tropes that only amplified negative stereotypes. Perhaps they thought the coming out scene for Will would refute the stereotypes and give him his comeuppance. Coming out as gay was meant to be a way for Will to take his power back from Vecna; however, it was clear that he wasn’t necessarily ready and it was the psychological torture inflicted by Vecna that forces him to come out. While the exploitation of Will could have been very interesting for the writers to explore, it was completely ignored. In fact, the creators of the show say, “We’re proud of the episode, and we’re proud of the scene, and proud of Noah [Schnapp, the actor who plays Will].” The pride in the scene was highlighted while also ignoring the horrific notion that a young boy was psychologically coerced into coming out to protect himself from a literal monster.
Additionally, the unrealistic experience Will has when coming out hides the very real homophobia of the show’s era. Let's be real: it's the 1980s in Hawkins, Indiana, at the height of the AIDS crisis. These characters likely would not be so supportive of Will. I think the writers wanted a pat on the back for diversity, but the scene felt like a historical fan fiction at best. The creators intentionally included hundreds of 80s references throughout the show but failed to address the clear and prominent issues their own characters would have faced during that time. Will's entire plotline feels inauthentic. Perhaps because it was written from a position of heterosexual privilege highlighting a feel-good world, ignoring the trauma so many queer people experienced and continue to experience.
To conclude Will’s story arc, Mike declares that Will is his best friend, nothing more and nothing less. After ten years of waiting to see how Will would take down the monsters who stole his childhood and tortured him, the creators erased a decade worth of trauma through the power of friendship.
