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You really hit the nail right on the head! I totally agree with you but have not been able to put it into words as well - Will be sending this to my friends :D

Queer fans can be so convincing when arguing that bad writing is actually set-up for a good queer storyline T_T (cf. Sherlock)

started intrigued but skeptical but holy crap the later season evidence is just. THERE. bravo this was amazing

Let's not overlook how important Eddie and his experience as the town freak impacted Mike. Mike clearly looks up to Eddie. (Or even has a little crush on him.) He grows out his hair, changes how he dresses, and starts playing D&D again. But the thing is, Eddie is queer-coded to hell and back. And Hawkins treats Eddie horribly for being exactly who he is. Mike may not realize that Eddie is queer, but he definitely internalized the treatment Eddie received for being different.

4:13 this video seems good but please try to improve your audio mixing next time i almost had a heart attack

No captions???? Girl i cant hear good

hiii, just wanted to mention that there might be an editing error at the 19:40 mark, it seems like a snippet of the video of you talking got into the video, just telling you in case you mind being seen on the internet ^^'

I've been focused too much on Lumax/Elmax to even notice what they were doing with Mike (but I could tell him and Eleven were... severely lacking intentionally), now I'm pretty gung ho for Mike being confirmed queer.

Hi can you enable auto captioning

I would love for this to happen honestly… but it sounds too good to be true 😭 I hope they surprise me though! I’ll come back to this in 2025

Every gay person who was a teenager during the 80's knows what Mike's behaviour is about.

19:39 idk if you intentionally left a few frames of reading script in but they are there I do love the editing though, the clips are so great as a visual filler and especially at emphasizing the text with visual proof

Such a beatiful video, thank you so much for it❤

i love the lowkey manipulation of "either this is a clever indication of mike's queerness OR it's bad and lazy writing" lmao

this genuinely has fully convinced me. i have never been against byler entirely, but I didn’t like how “one-sided” it felt to me. but this video has me begginggg for this aspect of Mike’s character to be true, and hopefully every moment from the previous seasons pay off satisfyingly

Hi! Please be careful with the audio, the difference in volume between you talking and scenes taken from the show is astronomical!

Did you voice Radio active for starfield radio? if not I think you have a vocal doppelganger xD

There's also the classic, "Imagine if it was a hetero pair" If Will was a girl--- I'm sorry. There's no way the staying by his bedside like that in S2 would get glossed over as just a friend thing, same with Mike freaking out in S1 about finding him, same with Mike being super possessive in S2. It would 100% be giving they're endgame and in denial.

Honestly I see myself and Mike I even treated my bff I had a crush on horribly because I was afraid to fall deeper for her. Externalized homophobia really is a terrible thing.

how can you say stranger things made netflix when lilihammer exists, how could you

i agree with you but i cannot imagine mike and will having a romantic moment it'd come across so awkward so i think it'll never go that far.

Idk, I'm queer but still not for it. Will deserves such a better love interest than someone who treated him poorly for two seasons, especially when the other two seasons he was missing/possessed. I would prefer rheir final confrontation be about how bad a friend Mike has been and Mike accepting Will and loving him as a friend over trying to fit a new romance in with everything going on. Our poor boy deserves better than Mike, even if Mike is gay.

I think I've watched this video like 6 times please make more

"I'm not gay, Greg."

I think you seriously _underestimate_ the intensity and severity of homophobia in the 1980s. Merely being accused was cause of immediate and relentless physical assault. The idea of having teens coming out in a regular high school and not being instantly violently ostracized by everyone, is the nice but frankly least realistic part of Stranger Things. That sort of thing could only happen in the most radical communities in that decade.

I was 100% a Mileven shipper until season 3, read all the fanfics about how their epic love would continue to develop as they grew up. Then season 3 happened and it felt like such whiplash to see their story suddenly become that so over done hetronornative trope of haha boys don't get emotions and girls are crazy right? And I was so frustrating because it felt like the characters and their relationship had been completely stripped back to basic gender norms which was just such a let down and so totally frustrating. Then he kept being weird in season 4 and I was just so confused until it finally clicked - he was acting just like I used to in relationships in my teens, playing the role rather than actually being myself in the relationship. I really really hope the plan is to make him canon gay/bi not just because yay Byler but because if that is what they are doing then it's so brilliantly written, but if that's not what's going on then honestly it's just a character assassination for the sake of dumb outdated jokes

I love videos like this! Please consider putting subtitles or including a transcript for disabled viewers so we can fully enjoy it without having to rewind constantly 🙏🏽

I want to point out as well that in this scene 42:33 , Mike reacts really weird to hearing argyle. He obviously saw him, so it’s odd that he’d kinda have such an exaggerated startled reaction. From personal experience, I do this when I desperately want to change the subject or get out of the awkward conversation so I’ll pretend to jump at the slightest thing to get attention off of me(idk why js my average way of doing things). Like, you could tell Mike was uncomfortable there, even if he was acting like he wasn’t ( the only question is why 🤨🤨🏳️‍🌈)

Every day I'm torn between "there is no way mike doesn't end up loving will" and "you're crazy, do you really think they would make the protagonist of one of the most popular series gay" but videos like this one help me ease the conflict lol

I like when Mike doesn’t say that he loves his girlfriend

Video so fire i imediatelly started rewatching after it ended🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

I LOVE your take on this. Best hour and twenty minutes I've spent in a while

I've been saying this, it always felt like Mike had internalized homophobia of some sorts because the way he acts around Will.... 🤔🤔🤔 in a queer lens, everything makes SO MUCH sense. He doesn't show proper love to Eleven, has to ARGUE to her that he loves her. He tells Eleven that that finding her in the woods was when his "life really started" or something like that, memory is tough. But he was looking for Will originally. In fact, if he was doing the trolley problem with 1 Will and 5 Elevens, he would've immediately ran over 5 Elevens. He was so incredibly loyal and protective to Will, until he got older. Then all the sudden he's obsessed about the fact that he's dating Eleven. And Will can get run over instead (hyperbole of course). The sudden change is so much more sensical in the context of gayness. 32:43 Oh my gosh, no way the actor wasn't directed to make an "Oh shit." realization face. Ahahahah just look at him, he has the same look that I have on my face when I realize I forgot to take my meds or something. I wouldn't believe this theory/analysis so hard if the writers didn't already dip one foot in the water with Vicky, then another foot with Will... mind as well go knee-deep in the water

1:08:32 I think it would be funny if Robin saw Mike, and was like, “my gaydare is going of”

i fell of the stranger things bandwagon around s3, because i was tired of the amount of nostalgia bait they stuffed in that often replaced progression of the plot and development of the characters. i watched your byler/queer mike theory video and now watched this, and i'm probably the most excited for the new stranger things season as i was when season 2 was announced. i'm looking forward to more videos from you, they are all very well done! 💖

You totally sold me on mike being bi or gay so now if it doesn't happen I'll be sad. But great video regardless

Stranger things if it was a love story

damnnn. damn. i really never thought of it more than will having a one-sided thing for mike but this video essay is hella convincing me. i don’t think netflix itself has the guts to go for a byler ending but that doesn’t mean it’s not what the writers wanted or intended.

Ohhh your mention of the theory that Mike wrote a letter to Will which was signed it as ‘love Mike’… it got me thinking. What if that ties into the Will’s “forgotten” birthday plot line? What if the reason that Mike “forgot”, why he didn’t bring Will a gift or even a card, was that he signed it as ‘love Mike’ and freaked tf out over it. That’s why he refuses to acknowledge Will’s birthday

i love the gay mike interpretation (i'm crazy about it. i am normal about it)

I’ve never liked Mike (also I haven’t watched the forth season yet, and you said he acts awfully in it…so I’m genuinely disappointed, hoped I’d finally change my mind about Mike’s character in it), but I would love to see us finally getting an explanation to his behavior 🙏🙏 I pray on internalized homophobia Mike being canon, because that’ll just make him an interesting and deep written character

19:39 oops, gotcha 👀👀👀

I think it would be a great move to have Mike and El not stay with each other, if anything because they were literal children when they got together. The reason that they haven't been working in the past couple of seasons may simply be because they're growing up. Puppy love is cute and a very special stage of development in a person's young life, but it doesn't stand on the same foundation as _real_ love that's made to last, and that's communication and trust. Two things Mike and El haven't been able to establish together leaving childhood.

The queercoding is impossible to miss but I am unfortunately very sure that the queer ships are not endgame, honestly im not even sure they are 100% intentional 😭 To me this is a bbc sherlock situation until proven otherwise.... 💔

1:18:15 to make Mike queer being a mastersteoke in writing vs. a sloppy narrative- you're absolutely right. but i would be STUNNED if they do. Johnlock shippers felt similarly-it WOULD have made sense to fully engage with the queer elements of the story, but the writers and creators WERE sloppy and frequently homophobic and actively queerbaited the audience. There was no secret good ending. Supernatural did the same, except they wanted to have their cake and eat it too, half-assed the finale, buried the gay, and fumbled the end of their series so hard it rivals GoT imho. Still no secret good ending. Maybe things'll come together for ST, but... yk. Its the kind of crowd-pleasing franchise that makes more money when queerbaiting & gay-burying tropes are used, so I suspect that's how it'll go.

I stopped watching after season 3 cause I just had too much going on, but I'm kind of glad I did. It used to be a show about the unyielding power of friendship and cosmic horror, but now from what I've gathered a big chunk of it interpersonal high school drama and the kid everyone was fighting for suddenly being sad and left out all the time once it becomes obvious that he's gay. Why the hell would I wanna see that? Having a friend who cared for you so deeply that they almost laid down their life suddenly giving you the cold shoulder and treating you like a nuisance most of the time is one of the most depressing things I can think of.

im so exited for s5, and will angst for some reason, i really want to see him have his main character moments since hes always overshadowed

i think the duffer brothers are very open and informed on how to write queer characters, they dont just write them to be inclusive, because will has been hinted to be gay from the beginning meaning they speant time writing him a self discovery arc, they also gave robin a 5 minute long coming out scene, which is quite rare in media since they are usually rushed for the sake of inclusivity, seeing how mike and el have not been in a healthy relationship for a 1 whole episode yet, since they either aren't together like in s1 and 2 or are broken up or fighting in 3 and 4 i wouldn't be surprised if they made byler Endgame

i absolutely agree with the argument that mike’s arc is so much more interesting and important if he is queer. his experience is such a similar one to my own and i feel like that’s why i recognized it in season 2. i fully agree his relationship to will is essential to the show no matter how it goes, i’ve been advocating for this for what feels like ages it’s hell its horror in the streets.

i hope you somehow read this comment since i couldn't reach you anywhere else but is there any way you could activate automatic subtitles? im not a native english speaker and i also have auditory issues with adhd, so subtitles really help me to understand you better :)