Retconning the Good

What is really wrong with Will's coming out

Well, it’s almost over.

Stranger Things is about to end. Even as a fan, I, for one, am glad.

For years, the show felt like someone made it for me, as it had so many things I enjoy. It felt at times like the whimsical big-budget fantasy of Steven Spielberg; at others, the real horror of Stephen King; and still other times, the quirky awkwardness of a John Hughes movie.

Then the finale of season four happened, and I realized that the show was probably ruined, even though I could not express it. Why?

As recent events have shown, it fundamentally cracked the essential joy at the heart of the show—friendship.

Friends Don’t Lie

The first three seasons are primarily about friendship. Like the great 80s fare of Goonies, ET, or Stand By Me (RIP Rob Reiner), Stranger Things was about the greatest of loves.

Yes, Mike and Eleven become a couple. But this happens in other works of fiction that display the joys of friendship—Harry Potter, for instance. At the core of the first season is Will’s friends not giving up on him, and Eleven finding friendship in the group.

We could say the same about season 2, which is about the rupturing of friendship. This, as I have noted before, is symbolized by the tunnels. Yet, in that season Steve and Dustin emerge as besties. Even season 3 develops a wonderful friendship between Robin and Steve, and Max and Eleven.

But the conclusion of season four ruins this in the retconning of the sexuality of Will Byers. And his coming out makes it all worse.

The Loss of Friendship in Modernity

CS Lewis in his prescience wrote this about friendship some 70 years ago in words the writers of Stranger Things would be better to know,

Those who cannot conceive Friendship as a substantive love but only as a disguise or elaboration of Eros betray the fact that they have never had a Friend. The rest of us know that though we can have erotic love and friendship for the same person yet in some ways nothing is less like a Friendship than a love-affair. Lovers are always talking to one another about their love; Friends hardly ever about their Friendship. Lovers are normally face to face, absorbed in each other; Friends, side by side, absorbed in some common interest. Above all, Eros (while it lasts) is necessarily between two only. But two, far from being the necessary number for Friendship, is not even the best.

This is the first four seasons of the show—each character is absorbed in a common interest and not each other. Mostly, that interest is Dungeons and Dragons. And this makes the show beautiful.

The very instance the writers retconned Will’s sexuality, they fundamentally ruined that dynamic. In doing this, the Duffer Brothers cave to modernity instead of giving us something transcendent.

So, yes, it’s bad writing. When he comes out, the timing is abysmal. And also, yes, I find the anachronism hilarious—just look on X for an AI version of how everyone would have reacted. Lastly, sure, I disagree morally.

But it’s really just disappointing, chipping away at what made the show great, for it is what made the movies and shows it aspires to be so wonderful. If in The Goonies, Chunk had a thing for Mikey, the lasting value of the film is lost. Transcendent goods ennoble us and cause us to return to the same stories again and again. Just ask JRR Tolkien and Peter Jackson—there’s a reason people keep going back to Lord of the Rings.

So, as the show ends tonight remember the wisdom of my friend Travis, who always waits until a show finishes to watch it.

And please, Pluribus, don’t wind up sucking.

Thanks for reading.