Will's monologue made us reflect on coming outs in movies and TV shows The episode of Stranger Things received a very low rating on IMDB

The seventh episode of the fifth season of Stranger Things has received the lowest IMDb rating in the show’s history. A verdict that many feel is justified, with the spotlight firmly placed on the coming out of the character Will Byers. A confession that viewers had long been aware of, both outside the events of the series (thanks to confirmation from actor Noah Schnapp) and through the many clues scattered across previous seasons, and which had finally come time to bring into the open. What ultimately weighed the episode down, however, was not the audience’s prior knowledge of Will’s secret, but rather the show’s screenwriting, which has bogged down the episode, much like the entire final chapter of the story and, consequently, the resolution of its narrative arcs.

The final season of Stranger Things: Will Byers and an overly verbose script

A missed opportunity on the part of the Duffer Brothers, who had envisioned Will’s journey from the very beginning of the character’s creation. Around 2019, ScreenRant unearthed official notes in which the showrunners described his arc. The coming out was therefore a planned milestone, but one that clearly stumbled due to the overly verbose writing weighing down Stranger Things 5 as a whole, where there seems to be a compulsive need to explain everything, repeatedly, at length, and in painstaking detail. As a result, Will gathers the rest of the group, has them sit in front of him, and launches into what feels like an endless speech, during which attention risks slipping more than once, before finally stating that he doesn’t like girls and that he felt compelled to confess because Vecna knows all his secrets.

Will’s coming out: an analysis

Now, let’s take a step back and add some context. It’s true: for those of us who already knew about Will’s sexual orientation, the scene may come across as overly emphatic. That said, despite the nostalgic aura having long since faded, Stranger Things is still set in the 1980s, a time when talking openly about one’s sexuality had a very different impact on people’s lives, something that isn’t even a given today, let alone forty years ago. The character therefore had every right to take his time. Paradoxically, though, this prolonged monologue—without explicitly acknowledging that he is speaking about something that could have been considered “not normal” at the time, in a world where the Upside Down and Demogorgons exist—ends up overloading a moment that could and should have been pivotal, both within and beyond the show. A series with the power to act as a cultural megaphone had the chance to send a message to its audience, but instead squanders one of the most important revelations of its story.

The comparison with Heated Rivalry

That Will’s coming out—, iven the global reach of a phenomenon like Stranger Things, can help advance conversations around openness and inclusivity in society is, above all, desirable. Still, it’s impossible not to wonder what kind of real impact it might have had if the writing had been sharper and more attentive. Fortunately, the show’s final season coincides with the conclusion of the first season of another series that set the internet ablaze and, within just a few weeks, became the center of the entertainment spotlight. Heated Rivalry, although the character of Shane (Hudson Williams) is caught exchanging affection with rival Ilya by his father, devotes a long sequence to the confrontation between the boy and his parents, an interlude that is far more substantial in terms of screen time than Will’s revelation, yet much more introspective and streamlined than Schnapp’s monologue. Not to mention the final scene of Heated Rivalry’s fifth episode, featuring the kiss on the ice between Scott and Kip set to I’ll Believe In Anything by Wolf Parade, in front of an entire crowd.

Once upon a time, it was Maya Hawke’s character in season three

For Stranger Things, this wasn’t even the first coming out. In the third season, sitting in a bathroom and separated only by a wall, Robin, played by Maya Hawke, comes out to Steve, portrayed by Joe Keery, who is in turn confessing his crush on her. This scene, too, is not particularly short, but it is punctuated by dialogue, sighs, moments of tears that dissolve into falsettos and laughter. Robin reveals herself to Steve, and the coming out unfolds as a process of gradual unveiling, where writing is the key element. And if the series didn’t want to repeat itself with Will, there was still a vast reservoir of examples from which it could have drawn some inspiration. Think of the exchange between Kurt and his father in the first season of Glee: not the only coming out in the series, but the first, featuring a parent who is fully aware of his son’s identity “since you were three” and who reassures him that this will never make him love him any less. The same happens, again on Netflix, in Heartstopper, when Nick, played by Kit Connor, tells his mother (Olivia Colman) that Charlie is more than just a friend and that he has realized he doesn’t only like girls, but boys too. The scene carries an undeniable emotional weight, but it is tenderness that ultimately prevails.

Other coming outs in film and television

There have been coming outs in cinema where there was hardly any need for one at all. Others have even been subverted. Tears still well up at the thought of the scene between Elio and his father in Call Me by Your Name, where the parent reassures his son that he is free to be who he wants to be, encouraging him to experience pain just as deeply as the joy he shared with his “friend” Oliver, adding his own admission of having once come close to what they had, of having felt the same things in the past but always stopping just short. Nothing is spelled out in the usual terms, yet everything is perfectly clear. It’s a moment of sublime writing by James Ivory, who won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay in 2018, and of exquisitely restrained acting by Michael Stuhlbarg. And when the coming-out scene itself isn’t particularly strong, as in Love, Simon, there’s often a later confrontation that makes up for it, like the one between Nick Robinson’s character and his father, played by Josh Duhamel, complete with a joke about what Grindr is (or isn’t).

The wrong examples and the right ones

There have also been misguided examples, such as the queerbaiting that became Riverdale’s trademark, but also virtuous ones—like the comedy Brooklyn Nine-Nine, which managed to condense a coming out, a sketch, and complete fidelity to Rosa Diaz’s character into just over a minute. Italy, too, has delivered a memorable sequence, marked by moving sincerity and disarming delicacy. In the second season of Skam Italia, while Martino (Federico Cesari) and Giovanni (Ludovico Tersigni) are playing PlayStation, the former confesses to his friend that if he’s been acting strange lately, it’s because someone has been throwing him into confusion. And no, that person isn’t a girl. Still holding the controller and barely taking his eyes off the screen, Giovanni lets the conversation unfold without much surprise—because nothing really changes whether his friend has a crush on a him or a her. And so they keep playing. A coming out that is simple, direct, linear. No anxiety about saving the world or escaping a Demogorgon, of course—but with writing that cuts straight to the point and feels good for the heart.