Will Byers Forever
In Stranger Things, paranormal powers are linked to being queer.
I don’t know if it’s possible to overappreciate Stranger Things. If it is, I’m at risk. I watched the series last summer and fell in love with it. Set in the folkloric midwest, it’s my favourite kind of horror—an eerie, atmospheric fantasy from people who know how to make lawn sprinklers sinister. Every last frame looks beautiful—the title sequence on its own should convince anyone—and the creators really know how to tell a story. At eight episodes (styled as ‘chapters’), it’s exactly the length it needs to be, and everything about it feels rich. The soundtrack is especially stellar, both the synth-laden score and the use of period songs, with a standout moment set to a cover of ‘Heroes’, and the whole thing is referential and reverential. I adore it.
Most of the characters have fans—the breakout star is Eleven, a girl with powers who feels unpretty—but I think my favourite is unusual. Within the world of Stranger Things, I always feel closest to Will Byers, who vanishes ten minutes in and appears least among the regulars. (The plot centres on his disappearance.) Part of what makes Will interesting is that from that point on, we learn things about him indirectly: when it’s revealed he does vivid drawings, has a den in the woods, likes the Clash, is good at hiding and gets labelled a fag, it’s the other characters who say so. In season one, Will is a person-shaped hole in the lives of those closest to him. That makes meeting him an intriguing thought—but there’s more to why I like him.
Even before going missing, Will seems like an outsider among outsiders. In the first scenes, he and his friends cycle home from a Dungeons and Dragons campaign: one by one, they peel off till he’s alone. Will’s family are poor and live on the outskirts of town, and while that sets up his disappearance, it also has aesthetic weight. Will Byers lives with his mother in a house at the edge of a forest, and as he wanders through it on his own, a monster makes away with him. In a show that wears its allusions on its sleeve, we’re firmly in Brothers Grimm territory, or perhaps another Will B’s. In Stranger Things, Will is a lost boy in the woods: in figurative terms, he represents the theme of adolescent coming of age more than any other character.
There’s other stuff. Like Will I was a poor kid with a single mum, a wizard in D&D and a fag. Where Will is deemed effeminate, Eleven is androgynous, and of all the show’s characters they have the most to do with otherworldly goings-on: in this series, paranormal powers go hand in hand with being queer. In the first episode, Will vanishes and Eleven is found, while in the eighth—spoiler alert—Will is found and Eleven vanishes. The two of them strike me as being narrative counterparts, and I’d like to see more of their duality explored. New episodes are due this year, and promise to feature Will in a more prominent role: till then, like most viewers, I’ll be nursing theories and headcanons. Now play me that theme tune again.
