The first volume of Stranger Things season 5 was a huge win for queer people everywhere, myself included. Not only did we get Robin making moves with Vickie and Will having a Nick Nelson Heartstopper moment about it, but we also got an incredible speech about accepting your sexuality and a scene where it’s pretty much implied that Will accepting his identity is what allowed him to tap into his power.
Queerness has always been tied in with magic, mostly because of the aspect of being an outsider, being an “other,” and well, persecution. However, in cases like Agatha All Along and Stranger Things, their linkage is depicted in a less alienating way. In these shows, being both queer and magical is powerful, and it’s cool as hell.
Like many others, I grew up as Stranger Things aired. When I first started watching, I was attending a private Catholic school and I had this (completely wrong) idea of who I was going to be when I got older. In the time between season 3 (which aired in 2019, when I was going into eighth grade) and season 4 (released in 2022, when I was a high school sophomore), I changed so much. I know a lot of people have this shared experience, so much so that there’s even a TikTok trend going around about it. But my point is: the show, and more specifically the character Robin, mean a lot to me.
In season 3, episode 7, there’s a scene where she comes out to Steve on the floor of a mall bathroom. I remember watching it for the first time and feeling such a heavy, indescribable feeling in my chest. Robin had quickly become one of my favorites (since I love Steve and Dustin and her plot revolved so heavily around theirs), so when she came out to Steve, I didn’t understand why I was filled with so much dread. If she was my favorite, shouldn’t I be happy? Why was I, in Robin’s own words, “so goddamn scared”?
By the time season 4 came out, I’d figured myself out enough to know I was bisexual and that the dread I felt watching Robin talk about Tammy Thompson was because I knew, somewhere deep down, that I shared those feelings. But at the time, I hadn’t been ready to explore them quite yet.
Because of this, I watched season 4 from a new lens—a queer lens, I guess you could say. I got excited whenever Robin talked about her crush on Vickie instead of feeling uneasy about it, and I also noticed the queer-codedness of Will Byers.
I know a lot of people have been on the “Byler” (the shipment of Will Byers x Mike Wheeler) train for a while, but I honestly hadn’t noticed the potential in their relationship until season 4 slapped me in the face with it. However, looking back now, I can see Will has definitely been queer-coded from the beginning. A lonely kid who pretends he’s a wizard and doesn’t understand why his friends want to spend so much time with girls? I mean, yeah. Duh. Looking back now, I think it’s a bit funny I didn’t notice he was gay, not only because there are so many characteristics I share with him, but also because there is literally a line from season 3 where Mike says, “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls.” In context, it doesn’t sound as direct as “you’re gay,” but it’s definitely a subtle, “hey, maybe the reason you don’t understand why we like girls is because you don’t feel that way.”
Regardless, season 4 is when I finally clocked the queer-coding of Will. When Mike visits him and Eleven in California, there is so much tension. It’s obvious Will is jealous of Mike’s attention being centered on Eleven instead of himself. They bicker in the roller rink to the point where Mike has to tell Will, “that’s because El’s [his] girlfriend,” and he and Will are “friends.” The disappointment on Will’s face is brutal. And that’s not even to mention the car scene from episode 8 where Will talks about Eleven being “lost without [Mike],” and how she’s “different from other people, and when you’re different, you feel like a mistake.” Again, very obvious that Will is talking about his own feelings, projecting them onto Eleven. After this, there’s a heartbreaking shot of him crying, cupping his nose and mouth so Mike can’t hear as he looks out the window to avoid eye contact.
So, yeah. Will has a crush on Mike, and it’s not going super well for him.
In season 5, while it’s still not going particularly great, it’s definitely better. With the help of Robin throughout volume 1, he starts to become curious about expressing his sexuality. At the end of episode 4, there’s an extremely powerful scene where he accepts his sexuality. Accepts the identity he’s been avoiding. Accepts himself.
In episode 1, Will sees Robin kiss Vickie, and when he is noticed, he runs away. When first asked, he denies it, but in episode 3, when Robin is bemoaning her dating struggles, he says, “You know you could always just kiss her again,” and Robin replies, “I knew that was your goddamn bowlcut.” The smiles they share after are truly beautiful. I’m genuinely so happy the writers decided to make them friends (mostly) out of nowhere.
After some laughter, Will asks Robin how to tell when someone is interested in you, and she replies, “A brush of the knee, a bump of the elbow, a shared look.” An episode later, Mike and Will have a heart-to-heart to ease the tension, with Will punching Mike’s arm. Robin notices it, and the look on her face is one that says she knows.
She and Will have another gay chat as they walk through the tunnels under Hawkins. Robin tells Will a personal anecdote about Tammy and how she believed “With Tammy [she] would finally be able to be [her]self… Cause there was always this part of [her] that scared [her].” Robin then found an old home video of her younger self, and realized:
It was never about tone deaf Tammy. It was always just… About me. I was looking for answers in somebody else, but… I had all the answers. I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared. Scared of who I really was. Once I did that, I felt so free.
I was looking for the answers in somebody else but I had all the answers? Oh, tears were shed! It’s incredible Robin is so confident about her sexuality. It’s the 1980s, so being queer isn’t exactly something to put in the spotlight, but the people Robin cares about (e.g. Steve) know, and that’s all that matters. Since Robin and Will didn’t really interact before this season, I think she probably saw some of herself in him—or just had great gaydar—and felt comfortable enough to tell him (and help him on his own journey). Queer friends are so important! While Robin has Vickie, it’s good she has a friend like Will who understands the experience, too. And I’m extremely glad Will has Robin to confide in.
The end of episode 4 is a cinematic masterpiece, honestly. Will, Joyce, and Mike are evacuating kids from the MAC-Z while Robin and Lucas accompany them to safety. Vecna appears, taunts Will about his spying, and throws him to the ground. When Will wakes up, Venca sends three demogorgons onto Mike, Lucas, and Robin.
Will stands up, ready to fight, as Robin’s words play in the background—“I was looking for the answers in somebody else” —and then the show fades into an old home movie: the very same thing Robin described in her sexuality anecdote.
A young Will sits on a swing for a moment by himself, and then a young Mike comes up to him. Mike asks Will, “Do you want to be friends?” and Will nods. In season 2, Mike talks about this exact scene on the first day of kindergarten, and says asking Will to be his friend “was the best thing [he’d] ever done.” Oh, my heart.
As the home movie continues to play with clips of a younger Will playing games with Mike and building Castle Byers with Jonathan, Robin’s voiceover continues.
When she says, “I was so free,” there’s a clip of Will in his wizard getup. When she says, “It’s like I could fly,” the show cuts back to present time, where a demogorgon is levitated into the air by… Will.
The camera cuts to Will with all-white eyes and an outstretched hand—fingers flipped upward, opposite to Eleven’s downward wrist. It’s unclear if he has telekinesis in general, or only a control over the demogorgons (I’m going with the latter), but regardless, he has powers. And what was playing as he tapped into those powers? A montage about accepting yourself. About how freeing coming into your identity can be.
Robin says for her “it’s like [she] could fly,” which is a metaphor, but also a superpower. When Will accepts himself, he gets a literal superpower. In the larger scheme of things, it’s not only being gay that Will has to stop being afraid of, but his entire identity. In that same “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” scene from season 3, Mike asks Will, “What did you think? That we were just going to sit in my basement all day and play games for the rest of our lives?” and Will answers, “Yeah, I guess I did.” In Dungeons and Dragons, he gets very into his character “Will the Wise” that he dreamt up “Castle Byers,” and he’s always had strong creativity through art. Will’s imagination is immense, and once he goes to the Upside Down, it’s easy to fall back into these imaginary worlds because the real world has rapidly become much scarier. So, in this final scene, Will is also accepting that he has to grow up. There’s no avoiding reality anymore because three people he cares about are in danger and will die if he can’t do something about it.
Will tapping into his power—or, magic, since he’s a sorcerer—is a coming of age. Hell, it probably represents even more than what I’ve just mentioned because it really is that powerful of a scene, but this magic he can now do truly is a symbol of how far he’s come. He’s survived so much physical and mental struggle, and only in coming to terms with it, this dormant power becomes realized. In this scene, Will is a sorcerer, and while I am not (I wish), I can’t even verbalize how much this scene meant to me. I’m simply filled with an overwhelm of pride and fondness. Who knew being gay could be a superpower?