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His friends referred to him as “no longer Gage” — a phrase that clearly resonated with Will, who earned the nickname “Zombie Boy” after seemingly returning from the dead in season one. How many times have we gotten that shot of Will touching the back of his neck and gravely saying either “He’s here” or “He knows we’re here”?
With so little material, Schnapp’s performance seemed to decline in kind, a problem that still exists in season five.
Integrating a character’s queerness into the narrative should add a layer of understanding, but in this case it further flattens Will, turning his lifelong issues with socializing into an empowering but simplistic A-to-B growth arc. But he was also once my favorite character, the most underrated role and performance in the show. By facing that possibility head-on and telling his family and friends that he’s gay, Will is asserting his agency and fighting back.
Depending on where you stand nine years into Stranger Things’s run, this scene might move you to tears or fall entirely flat.
I still feel it.” Schnapp made it easy to admire this poor kid’s bravery in facing some truly fucked-up shit and to ache for him to find peace.
But the show’s handling of Will started to slip early in season three, when he got shifted to a supporting role. In that time, we have also done deep explorations of the experiences of LGBT and transgender and nonbinary Americans.
As the United States celebrates LGBTQ+ Pride month, here are five key findings about LGBTQ+ Americans from our recent surveys:
Some 7% of Americans are lesbian, gay or bisexual, according to a Pew Research Center survey of 12,147 U.S.
adults conducted in summer 2022. We watched him weigh his anxiety about appearing not normal against his bone-deep fear of what would happen if he let the monsters in. Sometimes child actors just can’t quite make the transition to confident adult actor; Schnapp isn’t the only one in this cast whose performance now lacks the spark of those early, more intimate seasons.
Will still has his moments, especially when receiving wisdom from his brother, Jonathan, or reaffirming his friendship with Mike — and season five has had some success in shifting him back to a central role, hanging much of the final stretch on his connection to Vecna and setting the climax on the anniversary of his disappearance.
He played the “creepy kid” well in the possession scenes; remember the chilling “He likes it cold” moment? Will speaks about the fear that naming this truth would alter how the people he loves see him, and that being honest about himself could leave him isolated.
While Will does not explicitly name Mike Wheeler, the dialogue gestures toward feelings that the series has quietly suggested over multiple seasons.
Joyce and Jonathan reassure him without hesitation, and the rest of the group follows.
Season five is all climax, and as a result very little of it feels truly climactic.
Back in season two, Will listens to Mr. Clarke tell the story of Phineas Gage, who improbably survived an iron rod through the head but became a different man as a result. Will totally ceded the spotlight to Eleven at one point in the show, but now they’re sharing hero duties, which feels closer to the ideal balance.
The season establishes that Vecna feeds on fear and unresolved emotional wounds, particularly Will’s belief that revealing his sexuality would cost him the people he cares about.
Stranger Things is still fun, but it’s no longer Gage.
See All5 key findings about LGBTQ+ Americans
Pew Research Center has been tracking Americans’ attitudes toward same-sex marriage, gender identity and other LGBTQ+ issues for more than a decade. There’s also something powerful about seeing a young queer person embrace who he is and for that to be the force that helps him unlock his “sorcerer” potential and defeat the great evil.
But much of this rings hollow after the show spent years decentering Will’s perspective or only dwelling on his otherness in shallow ways.
But this theoretically huge leap forward for Will still doesn’t achieve the emotional power it deserves after five seasons of cumulative storytelling. Doesn’t Will deserve an arc that isn’t a conscious retread of another character’s backstory?
The bigger issue is that Stranger Things lost sight of Will Byers as a character over the years. For them, the lack of tension makes the moment feel less grounded.
The creators have maintained that the scene was long planned and essential to Will’s arc.
One is that there is no consensus about how best to measure sexual orientation. He also nailed the more grounded, human beats, like when Will listens to a story from his mom’s boyfriend about fighting off a recurring nightmare. Without anything to tie Will to the central story of that season — the return of the Mind Flayer, this time using Billy Hargrove as its host — he was left to complain about his friends’ incessant girl problems and pester them about getting back into D&D.
In an extended scene, he tells them that he is gay. Instead, Stranger Things struggled to find a place for the character, focusing too much on Will’s jealousy of Eleven and his bitterness about his friends growing up.
That continued in season four, even as the show addressed his sexuality more directly.