Why That Big Will Scene in Stranger Things Season 5 Resonates

[Warning: The following contains spoilers for Stranger Things Season 5 Episode 7, "The Bridge."]

The fourth season of Stranger Things confirmed something that fans of the series had long suspected: that Will Byers (Noah Schnapp), the awkward Hawkins, Indiana, kid whose disappearance in Season 1 was the catalyst for this nearly decade-long journey into the Upside Down, is gay. 

In the episode "Papa," Will shows Mike (Finn Wolfhard) a piece of art he painted that basically functions as a confession of Will's romantic feelings for his best friend. Mike, a straight boy to his core, is completely oblivious to those feelings, and Will never outright states, to Mike or to anyone, that he's gay. That finally changes in Season 5's "The Bridge," the penultimate episode of the series and one that features an admittedly odd coming-out scene that, like so many of the moments in Stranger Things, manages to actually be moving because of the layers that outside context brings to it.

Late in "The Bridge," Will comes out to his mom, brother, and all his friends at a pivotal moment: just before they're about to launch their 8 millionth (number approximate) plan to defeat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and save the world. One would think there is literally no time for such a serious, soul-baring conversation considering there is a lot going on at that moment. But come on. This is Stranger Things. There is always time to have an intense, borderline overwrought emotional discussion, even right before you're about to use a radio tower to lure a realm known as The Abyss closer to a small town in Indiana. Or something. Look, I'm still a little vague on how Steve's (Joe Keery) plan is supposed to work.

"I haven't told any of you this because I don't want you to see me differently," Will tells the group. "But the truth is I am. I am different."

He hems and haws for a while, touching on all the things he and his friends have in common, which struck me as an intentional echo of the words that Noah Schnapp, the actor who plays Will, used when he came out on TikTok in 2023: "I guess I'm more similar to Will than I thought." (Side note: I must object, with every fiber of my Gen X being, to Will's assertion that he and his friends "like drinking Cokes with Pop Rocks." No one drank Coke with Pop Rocks back then because we all believed the urban legend that Mikey from the Life cereal commercial died after consuming that obviously lethal concoction. This line should have been cut for accuracy, and I will die on a hill about this, after drinking a huge glass of Coca-Cola mixed with Pop Rocks.)

Finally, Will comes out, albeit without actually saying the words "I'm gay." Instead he says, "I don't like girls. I mean, I do. Just not like you guys do." He also explains that Vecna's mind control exposed Will to his worst fear: that once the people he loves find out he's gay, they will abandon him. His mother, Winona Ryder's Joyce, is the first to disabuse him of this notion: "You'll never lose me, ever." Then Will's friends each announce that he won't lose them either and embrace him in a massive hug that feels like the Stranger Things equivalent of a classic '80s movie trope: the approving slow clap, a device best employed in the 1986 film Lucas, which happened to star … Winona Ryder. (Also notable: Less than a decade later, in 1994, Ryder would play a documentary filmmaker who captures the moment one of her best friends comes out to his parents, in the movie Reality Bites.)

All of this reads as pretty corny until you consider a few things, particularly the pop culture of the era. The mainstream movies and TV shows of the 1980s were not exactly progressive regarding their treatment of the LGBTQ community, and that is an extreme and massive understatement. There were rarely gay characters on screen at the time, and sexual orientation in general was almost never discussed with any measure of sensitivity or nuance. In the latter half of the decade that was starting to change, by very tiny increments. In 1987, the same year this season of Stranger Things is unfolding, a Canadian-produced TV special called The Truth About Alex aired for the first time on HBO. It was about a football player, played by Peter Spence, who comes out to his best friend, played by Scott Baio, and faces bigotry and ridicule as a result. (Scott Baio is not nearly as nice to his friend when he comes out as Will's buddies are to him, although he does get over himself and apologize fairly quickly, proving once again that 1970s and '80s Scott Baio was unquestionably the best iteration of Scott Baio.)

That same year, a CBS Afterschool Special called "What If I'm Gay?" — coincidentally, also about a high school football player coming out in an environment suffused with homophobia — aired on CBS for the first time. (That athlete, by the way, was portrayed by a very young, extremely pre-Harry Goldenblatt Evan Handler.) It seems quite deliberate on the part of the Duffer Brothers to have chosen to close Stranger Things in 1987, given the importance that Will's acceptance of his gay identity now has to the outcome of this story. Coming out, as this episode explains it, has given Will the strength he needs to defeat Vecna, because he knows his worst fear won't come true.

ALSO READ: Stranger Things 5 confirms the show's status as a cross-generational all-timer

The way that Will's announcement is so quickly received and affirmed may seem a bit pat and unrealistic. That was my initial reaction as well. But there's a very valid, two-pronged counterpoint to that. Point one: Stranger Things is a show where demogorgons exist and Millie Bobby Brown can just move stuff by staring at it really hard. By definition, it is not always realistic.

More crucially, Stranger Things is a show that riffs on the vibes, aesthetics, and storylines of popular '80s films. But it also attempts to course correct for some of the ways in which the culture of that time failed us. So yeah, sure, maybe it's not realistic that in 1987, everyone would rally around Will so unreservedly after he comes out. But that's how it should have been and how it should be now.

Perhaps more than any other series over the past decade, Stranger Things is an intergenerational phenomenon. Gen X-ers watch it. Millennials watch it. Our Gen Z kids watch it. In fact, they grew up on it. To show a young man claiming his identity and being met with nothing but love, especially during what has been one of the more terrifying years to be a queer person in America in quite some time, is still a powerful thing for a mass audience to see and absorb. Maybe it isn't executed with quite the elegance that it could have been. But it matters, especially to any of those Gen Z-ers who have been watching Stranger Things since elementary school and feeling afraid to be who they are. Their favorite show just showed them that they can, and it will be OK.

Stranger Things Season 5 Part 2 is now streaming on Netflix.