#and it's not el's fault that she feels like she cannot be honest and rely on her boyfriend

[theoriginalsapphic]

Why i believe that byler is endgame (based only on what we have seen on the show). part 5

And by that, I mean: no color-coding analysis, no set props analysis, no actor interviews interpretation, no script analysis, no movies parallels analysis; nada. Only what we’ve seen on the show and nothing else.

This will use a lot of comparisons with m/leven because, despite the fact that some of you refuse to admit it, this is a love triangle.

Where do they end up at the end of season 4 and what does this mean for season 5?

So, a lot of things change during the season when it comes to these two relationships.

In the second episode of the season, Mike arrives to California. Although his encounter with El is sweet, his encounter with Will is awkward. However, during the season, we see Mike and El grow apart from each other, while Mike and Will tentatively try to fix their friendship and grow closer than they were at the beggining of the season, which is illustrated by the ending.

To talk further about it, it's necessary to discuss how these three characters feel in their relationships and the characters on their own.

how mike makes el feels

how mike makes will feel

how mike feels in his relationship with el

how mike feels in his relationship with will

El and Will and how their fathers shaped them

The show has drawn many parallels between El and Will, one of their biggest one being how they were both abused by a father from a young age, and how that has shaped their view of the world as well as their self-worth.

From what we’ve seen from El’s relationship with Brenner, he took her away from her mother, who loved her unconditionally since before meeting her, he has manipulated, made her a target against the other older children at the lab, he forced her into things she didn’t want to do (i.e: kill a cat, get her into a sensory deprivation tank to search in the upside down), he manipulated and used her over and over again.

On the other hand, we have Will’s relationship with his dad, which, even though we didn’t get to see much in the show (they haven’t even interacted!), we know he used to call him homophobic slurs from a young age and that he abandoned his family. There are also chilling pieces of dialogue (“he is good at hiding”, “he was never good at taking care of himself”) and character actions (Jonathan searching for Will in a car’s trunk) that it implies that it was very abusive situation.

However, abuse doesn’t present itself the same way, and it definitely doesn’t affect a person the same way, even when the abuser is the same person. I could write a whole mini-essay of how Jonathan and Will have the same abuser but the damage inflicted on them is very different.

To put it simply, Brenner and Lonnie messed them up in different ways.

In episode 3 of season 4, el is suffering greatly. She has lost Hopper, the first permanent parental-figure to treat like a child and not a means-to-an-end, and she has lost her powers, which has been the core of her identity her entire life, meaning she has lost her self. All the pain that she has been carrying for so long finally comes out in an explosive argument with Mike in which she reveals she feels like she doesn’t belong anywhere, that she is too different, that everyone thinks she is a monster. At her lowest point, she accepts to go to the NINA project to recover her powers, and learns more about herself and Brenner and their relationship that she had ever done before. It all culminates when El decides to leave Nevada to go to Hawkins to save her friends. When Brenner tries to stop her, she finally comes to terms with the abuse he has inflicted on her and all the other children at the laboratory, and concludes that he is the monster­­—not her.

El has built her worth around her powers and how much she can do with them to help others, so when she lost them, from her point of view, she was left with only the monstrous side of her. Brenner’s ambivalent love towards her based on how useful she could be to her, as well as her forced isolation of the world, made her to believe that she can never belong anywhere, that there is no place out there in the world for her outside of being a superhero. To have her say to her abuser’s face how he is the monster was probably one of my favorite moments from her, as well as an extremely cathartic one. By the end of season 4, El has finally realized her full complexity and that she is neither a monster nor a superhero. She is just a human being that was born with supernatural abilities, and is now choosing to use them for good, but ultimately, she wants to be defined beyond her powers, and she wants to be defined for who she is.

On the other hand, we have Will, who, similarly to El, has built his worth around being there for others. However, whereas as El’s is rooted on having powers and being a superhero, Will’s is based on his fear that he may be unlovable, and if he does or say the wrong thing, if he is not what people expect from him, they will leave him eventually. If his own father, one of the two people in the world that was meant to love him and want him unconditionally, could hate him, could abandon him… who’s to say that no one else will?

I don’t think is a coincidence that Will is the one that tries to keep the party together at any chance he gets (i.e: trying to keep the peace when Mike and Lucas begin fighting about who was supposed to be Vecna, how he calls out Mike for not knowing where Dustin is), and i don’t think is a coincidence either that he forgives so easily when others hurt him (because he is scared that if he loses the friends he currently has he will never have friends again), and it’s definitely not a coincidence that he tends to hide his problems even when it could put him in danger (because he doesn’t want to be seen as a burden).

A lot of people (myself included) criticized how Will indirectly confessing his feelings to Mike was used to develop a straight relationship. However, and in spite of the initial heartbreak of that scene, there was a silver lining: Jonathan listened. Jonathan, who became a pseudo-father to his own brother, probably even before their own dad left. Jonathan, who was shown throughout the series to talk to Will and try to make him feel better for being different, for liking things that other people dislike, for being a freak. Jonathan, that as soon as he had a moment to be alone with his brother, reassured him that he will always be there for him, and that he will always love him no matter what. And that, in my opinion, is what needs to happen with Will by the end of season 5: he needs to understand that he has a lot of people that will always love him and want him in his life no matter what.

Mike’s character

I honestly don’t like how some stranger things fans treat Mike as a character, or even some m/leven and byler shippers treat him, like he is seen as just something that can make El or Will happy without stopping to consider Mike as a character with his own needs and wants. (I’m not saying everyone does that because that’s generalizing and I don't like doing that, but I’ve seen quite a bit).

During the van scene, Mike opens up about his insecurities, about how he feels he is the random nerd to superhero El, how he is the lamer version of Louis Lane to El’s Superman. Usually, I wouldn’t mind a nice gender reversal of the hero/damsel in distress trope. However, in this case, it goes against what Mike wants to be: needed and special, the hero of the story.

Mike thrives on being needed, on protecting and taking care of others. In season 1, he searches for Will while he protects and hides El from the lab. In season 2, he protects and takes care of Will while he calls El in his walkie-talkie on the off-chance that she might still be out there.

It’s no coincidence that the majority of the general audience’s opinion on Mike starts to lose its positivity around season 3 and season 4, and that is because… he doesn’t feel needed anymore. At the beggining of season 3, El breaks up with Mike and spends her time establishing a relationship with Max, going shopping and trying new fashion style, reading new comics. A lot of viewers, as well as some characters in the show like Max and Nancy, call Mike controlling and tell him that El can make her own decisions, which I agree with. However, the point of this is not that Mike is some controlling boyfriend; the point is, he doesn’t know what to do when people don’t need him. In season 4, Will admits (indirectly) during his monologue that he was pushing Mike away. Although Will was trying to put some distance between them because of his feelings towards Mike, from Mike’s point of view, him and his best friend parted in somewhat good terms and then Will didn’t bother trying to keep in contact with him without giving a reason why.

The point is, Mike fears becoming unneeded to the people he loves, because in his head, being unneeded means being unwanted, means being unloved. That is the reason why, during the van scene, after sharing how insecure he feels about in his relationship, his whole face lights up when Will says that El [Will] will always need him.

He has spent too much time basing his self-worth on being what other people needed, which is why in season 5 he needs to relearn how to value himself. He can still be special, he can still be a hero (I personally believe in season 5 he will have a significant role in defeating Vecna), but first, he needs to understand that he can be loved and wanted without being needed.

end of season 4, volume 2

By the end of the season, Will confessed his feelings for Mike masking them as El's feelings and he has resigned himself to the fact that his love will never be reciprocated, and Mike gave El a love monologue.

And yet, this is how Mike/El and Mike/Will are by the end of the season.

In case it wasn't obvious enough

#byler #will byers #mike wheeler #el hopper #willel #jane hopper #this turned into an unintentional jonathan's appreciation post #the way that mike goes back and forth between will and el like a headless chicken it's kind of funny but also really #i don't think i should need to do this but just in case; i'm not bashing any of these characters #you may disagree with my opinion of them but i love these characters #it's not mike's fault he feels he cannot be himself around el #and it's not el's fault that she feels like she cannot be honest and rely on her boyfriend #sometimes people just aren't romantically compatible and that's okay #the last time i supported a queer crackship so much korrasami became canon #i can't believe that their core mike will and el share the same insecurity of not being good enough #and basing their worth on how much they can help others before helping themselves #albeit in different ways and due to different things