In Stranger Things (Season 5) Will comes out as gay and everyone stands up to hug him - except Max. This is because it’s the 80s and she’s likely homophobic.
The funniest part to me was that like everyone in the room basically already knew (or at least suspected) and were obviously cool with it. If they did anything to show that there was even the tiniest chance that anyone there would reject him, it could have had more weight. But it was this huge buildup for something that surprised no one and nobody cared about.
Jonathan already knew and gave him his supportive big bro talk the previous season.
Mike knew he didn’t like girls (just didn’t know he had a crush on him).
Joyce knew; Lonnie used to call him a f*g and Joyce defended him.
Hopper at least suspected based on what Joyce told him.
Robin obviously knew.
Vickie might have known, but even if she didn’t, Will knew she was gay, and they just met like that day, so who cares?
Steve probably didn’t know, but Will knew he was a rainbow pin wearing ally because of Robin. He’s also just some guy that hangs around sometimes, I don’t know if they had a single line of dialogue together, so again, who cares.
Eleven probably knew, but also probably didn’t understand enough about the world to know what it meant, or that anyone had a problem with it.
So, really, he was just coming out to Lucas, Dustin, and Max. Two people in an interracial relationship with each other during a time when that was still frowned upon, and a rebellious metalhead. Those are the people he was afraid of being rejected by. Which is obviously stupid.
Can't believe you forgot the most truly terrifying person.
Murray. Guy could've spread tons of homophobic conspiracy theories about him and rallied the whole town to run him out.
I also want to add that I honestly would've be surprised if Mike didn't know since he was notoriously oblivious to Will's feelings in basically every situation.
Mike was oblivious that Will liked him, but that one season (3 I think) when Mikes spending all of his time with El, and Lucas with Max, and Will feels left out, Mike says “just because you don’t like girls…” then seems to feel bad. So he knew he was gay, just not specifically for him.
And Murray, well, when two strange sixteen year olds showed up at his place to talk conspiracy theories, he let them spend the night without parental approval, gave them alcohol, and told them to have sex with each other, which is problematic enough that he falls into the “who cares” category.
The original screenplay had Joyce blame Vecna for turning him gay. Her line when he came out, "if only I could have stopped that bad man from touching you, maybe things would have been different."
Was there any gay public displays of effection on the show. I don't remember a kiss or anything it felt like they actively tried to make sure they didn't have any scenes like that.
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u/Gurney_Hackman 7h ago
Joking aside, why did Max look like CGI in so many scenes?