There are certain things one can expect from a season of Stranger Things: a plethora of ’80s pop culture callbacks, Eleven ex machina using her telekinetic powers to save the day, and Will Byers going through it. Sadly, Will has never known peace on this show. It’s his disappearance in the beginning of Season 1—snatched by a Demogorgon and trapped in the Upside Down—that kick-starts everything. Like Doug from The Hangover, Will’s less character than plot device in Season 1, and even after he’s rescued, he vomits an interdimensional slug in the closing moments of the finale. You hate to see it.
The ensuing years have piled on the misery for Will: being possessed by the Mind Flayer in Season 2, discovering his friends care more about girls than Dungeons & Dragons campaigns in Season 3, and harboring unrequited romantic feelings for Mike Wheeler in Season 4. All the while, he’s still had some kind of connection to the Upside Down. On the one hand, it’s heartbreaking that Season 4 ends with a familiar shiver going down Will’s spine when he returns to Hawkins, Indiana. On the other hand, is anyone surprised?
Hoping that Stranger Things’ fifth and final season takes it easy on Will is a fool’s errand. Sure enough, we open with a flashback to Will’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time in the Upside Down. In an intriguing twist, Will isn’t just attacked and knocked unconscious by a Demogorgon: He’s brought forth to Vecna, who slithers one of his tendrils down the poor kid’s throat. As a tone-setter for Season 5, it’s an effective way to underline that everything that’s transpired in Hawkins can be traced back to Will’s fateful kidnapping—a boy who vanished and never truly came home.
In the present day, the Byers family now lives with the Wheelers, a consequence of being in Hawkins when the town is put under military quarantine. Vecna has yet to reemerge when Will starts to experience strange visions. Will believes that his connection to the Upside Down grows stronger the closer he is to Vecna, which would also explain why he didn’t have any episodes when his family moved to California in Season 4. Those fears are realized when Will doesn’t just witness a Demogorgon abducting little Holly Wheeler but sees everything happen through the monster’s eyes. As Robin Buckley theorizes, Will is essentially a human radio receiver that can tap into frequencies from the Upside Down, where every creature under Vecna’s control is part of a hivemind.
That Will remains intrinsically linked to the Upside Down is heartbreaking—a potent metaphor for the ways in which trauma can linger throughout someone’s life. Will has been further isolated because none of the other characters are able to relate to his experiences, and, with the exception of Jonathan Byers, it seems that nobody’s aware he’s struggling with his sexuality. Thankfully, Will doesn’t just help drive the plot in Season 5: By forming some meaningful new connections, he’s coming out of his shell.
Every season of Stranger Things likes to throw new characters together; this time around, Will and Robin share some screen time. In hindsight, it’s a no-brainer that creators Matt and Ross Duffer would pair Will with Robin—someone who’s embraced her queer identity but, in Ronald Reagan’s America, still has to keep it under lock and key. When Robin visits her new flame, Vickie—who works as a candy striper at Hawkins Memorial Hospital—Will inadvertently spots the couple kissing before fleeing the scene. Later, Robin talks to Will about what he saw, and he wonders how she knew that Vickie was also gay. She explains that she picked up on the subtle signs: the brushing of a knee, the bumping of elbows, a shared look. “It all just kind of accrued, like a snowball rolling down a hill, until it was obvious,” Robin says. “Let’s say the, uh, snowball became an avalanche.”
Robin realizes that Will is trying to say the quiet part out loud by asking these questions. And after watching him interact with Mike—as he looks for the same signs she picked up from Vickie—Robin knows that he’s on the same path she once walked, living with the truth before giving it a voice. In one of the best moments of the season so far, Robin tells Will what it was like when she came to terms with her sexuality and why her feelings for someone else were never as important as learning to become comfortable in her own skin. “I was looking for answers in somebody else, but I had all the answers,” she says. “I just needed to stop being so goddamn scared. Scared of who I really was. Once I did that, I felt so free, it’s like I could fly.”
It’s Time to Return to Hawkins
Will getting this support system is a much-needed win for a character who’s endured so much, but as our heroes get an inkling of Vecna’s plan—kidnapping a handful of children by presenting as friend instead of foe—you can’t help but worry that Stranger Things will come full circle. If Will was Vecna’s first victim, perhaps he’s destined to become a pawn in the villain’s game. Nevertheless, Will and Co. come up with an inventive idea to save the kids of Hawkins, who’ve been corralled by the military after Holly’s disappearance: sneak them through a tunnel underneath the base and smuggle them across the quarantine zone in Murray Bauman’s delivery truck. (It’s like a wholesome version of the Pizzagate conspiracy.)
Naturally, things don’t go according to plan. The military catches on to them, and to compound everyone’s misery, Vecna enters the playing field. Vecna and his Demogorgon army barely break a sweat, wiping out the soldiers and bringing the kids back to the Upside Down. Then comes the fateful reunion: Vecna pulls Will toward him, explaining that he’s taking children to enhance his powers because they’re weak and easily manipulated. “You were the first, and you broke so easily,” Vecna tells him. “Some minds, it turns out, simply do not belong in this world: They belong in mine.” Vecna returns to the Upside Down, leaving the Demogorgons to finish off Mike, Robin, and Lucas Sinclair.
The sequence is reminiscent of Vecna attacking Max Mayfield in Season 4: He preys on their trauma, making them feel less than. But just as Max used the memories of her friendships to break free from Vecna’s hold—with a helpful assist from Kate Bush—Will recalls the formative moments of his youth: meeting Mike, drawing pictures for his mom, building Castle Byers with his brother. Then, just as the Demogorgons are ready to deliver the fatal blows, they’re stopped in their tracks. Will taps into heretofore unseen telekinetic powers, and he’s not just Eleven’s psychic peer. When he snaps the limbs and necks of the Demogorgons, it becomes clear that his abilities are very Vecna coded.
First off: hell yeah. Second, Will’s sudden evolution brings with it a host of questions: Are these powers innate? Did spending time in the Upside Down lead to them? Is he fully in control, or was he able to access them only because his friends were in mortal danger? We always assumed that Eleven would defeat Vecna, just as she’s been the final defense against monsters from the Upside Down at the end of every season. But this Will development makes me wonder whether he’s Hawkins’s final savior. One of the nicknames Will earned on the series was The Boy Who Came Back to Life, echoing Harry Potter’s nickname, The Boy Who Lived. If the Harry Potter parallels go beyond that, maybe he’s the only one who can stop Vecna.
In any event, this is a thrilling development for the back half of Stranger Things’ final season. Will has long been the poster child for many of the show’s heavier themes: how trauma lingers in the shadows, the loss of innocence, and the fear of being misunderstood. Amid all this adversity, Will’s story felt like it was always going to end in tragedy. But after watching him rescue his friends and unlock powers deep within himself, I realized that perhaps I had everything Upside Down. Will Byers isn’t the boy who came back to life—he’s the boy who learned life’s worth fighting for.
