The following post contains spoilers for the events of “Stranger Things” Season 5, Volume 2.
Let us never underestimate “Stranger Things” again: Amid all the Demogorgons and nosebleeds, this show can still make us weep.
Netflix released Volume 2 of the sci-fi thriller’s final season on Thursday night, and this latest batch of three episodes wraps up with a cathartic and long-awaited moment for Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), in which he comes out as gay to his closest loved ones.
The scene (which takes place in the final 10 minutes of Season 5, Episode 7) is the first time that “Stranger Things” has explicitly stated Will’s sexuality for the audience, but the series has certainly dropped clues before — not only about Will being gay, but about his unrequited feelings for best friend Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard). When Season 4 was released back in 2022, Schnapp cut through any lingering confusion for fans, confirming to Variety that Will “is gay and he does love Mike.”
“Obviously, it was hinted at in Season 1: It was always kind of there, but you never really knew, is it just him growing up slower than his friends? Now that he’s gotten older, they made it a very real, obvious thing,” Schnapp said at the time. “I think it is done so beautifully, because it’s so easy to make a character just like all of a sudden be gay. … They are writing this real character and this real journey and real struggle and they’re doing it so well.”
Will’s coming out makes him more powerful against Vecna
Although Will has been struggling to both accept and express the truth about his sexuality throughout Season 5, he decides to have that pivotal conversation with his friends and family in Episode 7 after fearing how Vecna might use this deeply personal secret against him in the coming battle for Hawkins.
“The truth is, I am different,” Will shares with everyone at The Squawk. “I just pretended like I wasn’t because I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends, and I am like you. I’m like you in almost every way. … I just… I just… I don’t like girls. I mean, I do, just not in the way you guys do.”
Will goes on to share that he had a crush on someone who isn’t gay — Mike clearly picks up what Will is putting down here — and reveals that, although he knows Vecna can’t actually see the future, Will had become terrified of a vision of the future that Vecna put in his head, in which Will’s secret about his sexuality causes him to become ostracized from his loved ones until he’s lost every one of them.
“Will, you gotta listen to me. That will never, ever happen,” Joyce tells a sobbing Will (an excellent Schnapp). “You’ll never lose me. Ever.” And in a moment of lovely and emotional closure, the rest of Will’s family and friends chime in one by one, confirming that Will will never lose any of them — and their support newly emboldens Will to help take on Vecna in the looming showdown against him.
“I need to be there. And I’m ready,” he says. “I’m ready to show him I’m not afraid anymore.”
How did you react to Will’s big scene, “Stranger Things” fans? And what do you hope to see in the series finale on New Year’s Eve (8 p.m. ET)? Grade Season 5, Volume 2 in our poll below, then drop a comment with your full reactions to the new episodes.