#jonwill

[pinkeoni]

"You shouldn't like things because people tell you you're supposed to."

[drangues]

duffers ure telling me u parallel billy and jonathan and then dont make max jealous of will for having what she doesnt and Don't make jonathan the steve to her dustin,,,,smh,,,,,

[coldninjaruins-blog]

Byers siblings incorrect quotes.

[therainscene]

@emblazons recently made an excellent point about Jonathan in S4 -- that there are lots of little hints suggesting he's not only been picking up on Will's queer-coding, but Mike's as well, and could be in the process of connecting the dots on Byler.

I'd like to add some more evidence to the pile, because while dual-meaning throwaway lines like the above are easy to dismiss as coincidences...

...it's harder to ignore the fact that the van scene is explicitly shown from Jonathan's POV.

You might be wondering how this tells us anything about Mike -- after all, Jonathan's observations here lead pretty directly to the pizzeria heart-to-heart, so surely this is just about the Byers brothers?

But as I've pointed out before, the pizzeria heart-to-heart was not in the original script, and was only added after they'd already filmed the van scene. [source]

So if a heartwarming affirmation of brotherly acceptance wasn't the reason for the van scene to be shown from Jonathan's POV... then why Jonathan POV?

Jonathan, amongst others, has been showering Will with love and acceptance since S1 -- but nobody has ever bothered to tell Mike that they're proud of him, and he's been spiraling into depression and comphet because of it.

In the van, Will came so close to breaking Mike out of that spiral by assuring him that he's valuable for being exactly who he is... but his own internalized homophobia sabotaged the whole thing and only served to shove Mike even further into the closet.

So isn't it interesting that the Duffers felt the need to spell it out for us that Jonathan was watching all of this go down?

[heartsgettingwiser62]

This is literally s3 Jonathan Byers watching Will wear jorts

[bewilderedbuck]

He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, The Hollies

[will80sbyers]

[ohfallingdisco]

Thinking about how Jonathan Byers, at 15, was making pancakes for his little brother and showed him the song that saved him in the UD and took care to distract him when their parents were fighting and saw his friendship with Mike well enough to think he’d just stayed the night and made enough posters to hang them up all over school and ate up any hints he could get that maybe, just maybe, his baby brother was alive…but then the stupid government pulled that stunt with the fake body and made him think he had to organize and host his little brother’s funeral by himself while his mom was out losing her mind

[artthoufruity]

The Byers adopted El and Will immediately developed middle child syndrome.

[pinkeoni]

hey little bro check out this cool brit punk song. our father doesn't love you. it's okay to be gay

[cannibalismyuri]

the willel and jonwill enthusiasts really got fed this season huh.

[coldninjaruins-blog]

Will is the kind of brother that when his siblings ask him to do something, he says no while he starts doing it right then and there because he thinks that it's top tier comedy.

[therainscene]

Here's a quick Byler proof I don't think I've seen anyone address before:

If Will's queer arc is about being accepted by his family and friends after a gentle rejection from Mike, then it follows that the pizzeria heart-to-heart is a vitally important scene.

His arc is about being accepted, after all -- and Jonathan just accepted him! Big moment!

If Will is to move on from Mike with the help of platonic love in S5, then this scene foreshadows it -- it begins with him looking desperately lonely and lovesick as he gazes longingly at Mike, and ends with Jonathan assuring him he's not alone and will always be loved, no matter what.

So why, then, was this scene only added as an afterthought?

For a story that's supposedly about platonic love being the best a gay boy can hope for in the 80s, it's hard to imagine that a scene like this wouldn't have been one of the first bullet points jotted down in the writers' initial plot outline... yet the Duffers didn't think to chuck it in until they were already *filming* the van scene. [source]

Either they're incompetent storytellers who almost forgot a central plot point... or self-actualizing via the acceptance of straight people simply isn't what Will's story is about.

[sunflowersand-bees]

i have so many st textposts

[bylertruther]

jonwill + "if my brother is dead, i am not alive. if i am alive, my brother can't be dead."

[will80sbyers]

STRANGER THINGS Chapter Two: The Weirdo on Maple Street | back «