Five Reasons Why Dustin Is the Best Character on “Stranger Things”

A spoiler-rich analysis of the most surprising and wonderful character in the Duffer Brothers featurette

Every narrative needs a hero, and Stranger Things has several. At the heart of the story is Mike Wheeler, part of a gang of pre-teens who have to make sense of the disappearance of one of their members, Will Byers. Then there’s Joyce Byers, single mother with a history of depression and a dogged determination to find her missing son, then Jonathan Byers, Nancy Wheeler and Chief Hopper: all well-rounded characters who are just archetypal enough to not need much backstory. Everyone on my Facebook timeline went insane over Eleven, the girl with telekinetic powers lifted straight out of a Stephen King novel (specifically Carrie and Firestarter) who is played to eerie perfection by Millie Bobby Brown.
They’re all great, but none as great as Dustin Henderson, who is a true original. Here are five reasons why Dustin is the best character on Stranger Things.

Dustin stems from at least two characters we loved.
The gang of adventurous boys is a staple of ’80s cinema, from E.T. to Stand By Me to The Goonies. The latter seems to form the basis for Stranger Things’ group of D&D-playing, tightly-knit group of friends and their friends and family. But while Mike Wheeler is very much Mikey Walsh (down to the similar name), Nancy is a badass Andy and Jonathan is a misfit Brandon, Dustin is a conflation of Chunk and Mouth: a chubby kid who is teased over his appearance (specifically, his lack of teeth), but is also the smartest smartass of the bunch. Like Chunk, Dustin likes his food; like Mouth, Dustin is smart and funny and crucial to each breakthrough in the story. Which brings us straight to the next point…

The chubby kid is never the smart kid.
’80s movies contain plenty of characters like Chunk, lovable tubby idiots with no dignity and in need of constant saving. Dustin is nothing if not whip-smart: while the others fumble around for explanations, he draws on his scientific knowledge to point out crucial details. This is one of the many departures from ’80s canon that sets Stranger Things apart from its source material: much like Joyce starts off as a frazzled mother and later works out a way to communicate with her missing son and Steve redeems himself from his cartoonish bad-boy persona, Dustin starts his life as the goofy sidekick and quickly turns into the most important member of the gang, their emotional glue as well as the only one who knows how a compass actually works. The chubby kid as the smartest member of the bunch is a true revolution.

He is an unapologetic nerd and a proud misfit.
Dustin knows things. A lot of things. Some of them useful — where true North is, how parallel universes work, why he’s still missing his front teeth— and some less useful. He makes no apologies for this corpus of knowledge, or for his enthusiastic devotion to Dungeons & Dragons. Dustin doesn’t care about fitting in: he’s got his friends, his snacks, his everyday life. He’s also quick to accept Eleven’s powers as “awesome” and her weirdness as normal. Being teased about his baby teeth doesn’t unsettle him much, or at least not as much as Mike and Lucas fighting. Dustin has his priorities straight.

He’s sensitive, but never weak.
At the beginning of the first episode, Dustin wonders aloud what is going on with Mike’s sister Nancy, who has just rudely shut him out of her bedroom: “She used to be cool” he says. He’s the first to pick up on emotional developments, and has a cool, level-headed approach to relationships: when Mike and Lucas stop talking to each other after a bad fight, he scoffs at Mike’s obliviousness to Lucas’s jealousy over Mike’s apparent attachment to Eleven, and successfully talks him into attempting a reconciliation. His friends are everything to him, and he’s willing to sacrifice himself for them: when the school bullies threaten to take out his teeth with a knife if Mike doesn’t jump off a cliff into the lake — which, as has been previously established, would most definitely kill him — he refuses to budge and is willing to be tortured in order to save Mike. Dustin is the best friend anyone could have.

Gaten Matarazzo is amazing.
Most of the child actors on Stranger Things have very little experience: this is only Gaten Matarazzo’s second major role (the first being Gavroche on Les Misérables) and it’s a star-making turn. The Duffer Brothers told Variety that they were inspired to give him a larger role in the story after they started working with him, and it’s easy to see why: here’s hoping that a second season of the show picks up where the first one left off, and that we get more Dustin as a result.