It’s “100% clear” that Will Byers is gay to Noah Schnapp, the actor who has played him for the past nine years. But, as Stranger Things drops the first batch of episodes in its final season, the show is still practicing the art of subtlety when it comes to its protagonist’s sexuality.
For Stranger Things, sexuality has always been a topic to handle with care. Set in the 80s but speaking to a contemporary audience, the show has the challenge of portraying sexuality in a way that’s accurate to its setting without perpetuating regressive attitudes of the time.
Since season 1, Will’s sexuality has been in the subtext of the show, whilst artfully managing to not thrust labels onto a character who wasn’t even a teenager when we first met him. “He’s a sensitive kid. Lonnie used to say he was queer,” Joyce Byers (Winona Ryder) tells David Harbour’s Jim Hopper early on, quickly shutting down Hopper’s question about whether Will is gay. “He’s missing is what he is.”
In a season 3 argument between Mike and Will, who is now struggling as his friends navigating budding romances, Finn Wolfhard’s Mike tells him, “It’s not my fault that you don’t like girls,” a moment that even Wolfhard says could be interpreted as a general comment about Will’s lack of interest in dating, not a statement about his sexuality.
Season 4 ramped up Will’s implied sexuality. Will seemed to be all but confessing his own feelings under the guise of talking about Eleven in a conversation with Mike. “She’s so different from other people,” he says, “and when you’re different, sometimes you feel like a mistake,” before bursting into stifled tears as he turned his face away so his friend wouldn’t see.
In the season finale, a tender moment between Will and his brother, Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), sees the older Byers son offer his support to Will without explicitly saying why. “I don’t want you to forget that I’m here. I’ll always be here no matter what because you’re my brother and I love you,” he says before emphasizing, “and there’s nothing in this world, absolutely nothing, that will ever change that.”
For some viewers, though, this moment was the last straw in a years-long debate about how the show handles Will’s queerness. “Will didn’t come out. It’s all still subtext, and at this point, the subtextualization of Will’s sexuality is becoming a problem,” wrote Vulture’s Jason B. Frank. For The Independent, Eleanor Noyce wrote that she felt “queerbaited” by Will’s storyline, “Implicit hints regarding a character’s identity aren’t just disappointing, they’re cowardly.”
Without explicitly showing Will’s queerness, these critics say, the show misses out on real LGBTQ representation. But Stranger Things hasn’t shied away from a coming-out story entirely.
In season 3, the show introduced Maya Hawke’s character, Robin Buckley. By the end of the season, she came out to Joe Keery’s Steve Harrington in a bathroom stall with a look of fear on her face that quickly settled into a smile when he instantly accepted her. “Tammy Thompson, she’s cute and all,” Steve tells her after she opens up about having a crush on a girl who was more interested in him than her, “but she’s a total dud.” By the following season, she has a fully fledged and reciprocal same-sex romance brewing.
Will’s storyline, however, deserves to be treated differently. No coming out journey is the same, nor is it easy for everyone, especially in the 80s. A young teen growing up in rural Indiana during the AIDS epidemic and the rampant homophobia that came with it might not be too quick to come out.
Will is also younger than Robin and very much still figuring it out. Even Schnapp, who came out in 2023, says that he didn’t realize he was gay until he spent his teens playing Will. “Once I did fully embrace that Will was gay, it was just an exponential speed towards accepting it for myself,” he told Variety.
If the show is, as it seems to be, building up to Will’s sexuality becoming more obvious later in its final season, that’s as valid a coming out journey as any other.
