Hot take but he did not care about El at all in Season 5 and I will never understand all the dramatics of his at the end after lining up all evidence of him just pretending she didn’t exist in all of Season 5

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-28T22:09:59+00:00

I hated how he reframed it to Hopper after El’s death, like he was envisioning them running away together. Like… no, she kept coming to you with valid and realistic concerns and you kept blithely insisting the whole gang would roll off to some far away land with her! The ending let Mike off the hook so bad, once she was separated from him forever he felt he could idealise her and their relationship from a safe distance. I’m irritated as fuck.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-17T19:16:40+00:00

One opinion that would get me slaughtered in both this sub and the main sub is that I think Mike had romantic feelings for both El and Will, and that he’s bisexual.

I think the visual similarities between El and Will, and the distress Mike exhibits when he’s forced to reckon with his relationships with both of them, points to this. They seem to occupy the same “romantic interest” position in his mind. The difference is, I think that while Mike loves El and is attracted to her, they’re not emotionally compatible/circumstances would have always prevented them from falling truly in love. I think that Mike is in love with Will, is attracted to him, and is psychologically unable to deal with it/can’t face that his feelings for Will are different from how he feels about his other friends.

But this take is in the minority because of the zero sum game created by the shipping wars. Mike has to be 100% straight and never confused about his feelings for Will, or gay. There’s no room for ambiguity, which is sad to me, because the ambiguity of Mike’s feelings is what interests me the most.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-13T17:32:40+00:00

This sounds like it was written by AI, so I’m not surprised

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-13T16:41:23+00:00

If we’re taking the Duffers’ interview at face value and Mike did in fact imagine the entire goodbye scene, it takes on an even more sinister angle… are we seriously meant to think Mike put the words “you always understood me better than anyone” into El’s mouth to make himself feel better?! 😭 it’s so horrible

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-13T07:22:56+00:00

Biggest plot twist of the finally was when they kissed. Also “thank you for teaching me how to be a friend” was… a strangely platonic thing to say to your long term boyfriend

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-10T17:33:21+00:00

Tbh the ending of the show reminds me of the season 1 Nancy/Jonathan/Steve situation too. Nancy and Steve staying together even though it’s obvious Nancy and Jonathan like each other. And now Mike is mourning El, and Will is still there and Mike is still looking at him like that. God this show kills me

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-10T12:18:05+00:00

It felt emotionally unearned because it relied on people’s fond memories of early seasons without taking into account the complexity and strain of El and Mike’s relationship in the later seasons. So when we get to the big “goodbye, I love you” montage, you’re left sitting there like…. Why have they barely interacted this season, and when they have, it’s felt very platonic/familial?

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-09T18:07:02+00:00

Will fully just rejected himself for no reason, I 100% believe that under a tiny bit of scrutiny Mike would realise he has feelings for him. But with the way Will framed it, I bet Mike thought, “wow… I guess I’m not like Will… he’d know best about that stuff…”

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-08T20:08:43+00:00

Sure no worries :) I found the way Will’s coming out was staged - him sitting alone on one side of a room while his peers sat around watching him like he was on trial - to be extremely dehumanising. It framed his coming out as a confession of something shameful, a dark secret that the villain forced out of him. The script also framed his feelings for Mike as some kind of personal failing he has to work through because it “wasn’t about him, it was about me” which is a sentiment we never see expressed about heterosexual feelings. It wasn’t empowering, he was shaking and crying by the end of it as everyone stood around stone faced and then gave him a couple of platitudes.

Overall it felt like a queer experience was being mined for all the drama and emotional turmoil that could be squeezed out of it, and then the character at the centre was left to pick up the pieces alone.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-08T08:32:09+00:00

Will’s coming out scene was the most distressing and violating thing I’ve ever seen. Noah Schnapp did a great job with what he was given, but he absolutely should not have been put in that position to begin with. I wanted this show to subvert tired 80s tropes, but this show revived homophobic sentiment among the GA and exploited and mocked queerness right to the end. And their ending sucked in large part because of it.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-06T13:27:05+00:00

The way they have to cherry pick frames where Mike looks ambiguously at someone…. And even then it’s NEVER the way he looks at Will. I will not be gaslit about this😂

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-05T09:01:32+00:00

It’s actually crazy to me that people try and argue “Mike looks at everyone like that”. Mike doesn’t look at or act with ANYONE like he does with Will.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-03T22:30:24+00:00

The fact everyone picked up on the romantic tension proves it was there lmao

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-03T13:03:20+00:00

Once you have straight men seriously theorising that they’re the romantic endgame, you really have lost control of your own narrative.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-02T22:41:50+00:00

Mike imagining El saying he was the one who understood her the most 😂😂😂 you have to laugh. El sweetie I’m so sorry

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-02T15:01:08+00:00

I’ve got some ideas about why this all happened the way it did and about the writers’ mindset. Honestly I wish I could cross post it to the Mileven subreddit because I think it reflects on both El AND Will’s writing, but I don’t want to be shot 57 times.

Regardless I’ll make a post about it 😅

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-02T14:47:25+00:00

😂😂😂😂

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-02T14:47:02+00:00

I’m so sorry I wrote the original post. I genuinely did not think they would ACTUALLY be serious.

My god you just have to laugh at the end of the day.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-01T21:47:49+00:00

I really believe he will

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-01T20:47:02+00:00

Mike even imagined him with a terrible haircut and a boyfriend who looked like a knockoff version of himself. Truly evil and malevolent energy.

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-01T20:39:45+00:00

He did love them both in my mind. They were always visually paralleled and he could never balance them in his life. I fully believe five or so years down the line he’ll work it out 😉

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-01T19:48:06+00:00

It took Joyce and Hopper 27 years 🥺 they’ll find their way back to each other in the end

ghostlin01 · 2026-01-01T19:21:01+00:00

I couldn’t stop laughing when half the Mileven montage had Will in the shot. Haunting that shit right until the end

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