By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 28 seconds ago

Stranger Things had a very rocky final season, and its penultimate episode ended up being the lowest-ranked of the entire series. There are many reasons fans disliked that episode, but the one most frequently mentioned is the prolonged scene in which Will Byers came out to his friends, finally confirming to his inner circle (and a few more distant associates) that he is gay. Now, in a recent interview, the Stranger Things showrunners defended this scene by declaring it fit the show’s themes and narratives while explaining more about how our plucky heroes would ultimately defeat Vecna.

Will’s coming out scene was dragged by many fans for surprisingly different reasons…some hated it for culture war reasons, seeing the addition of a prominent gay storyline to an ‘80s homage as proof that Stranger Things had gone “woke.” Others just thought the scene was clunky; after all, it takes forever, it features multiple characters Will never interacted with, and (I hate to say it) Noah Schnapp’s performance makes the intended emotional beats unintentionally awkward. However, in an interview with Variety, the Duffer Brothers defended this scene by emphasizing both its powerful symbolism and its importance in underscoring how to defeat Vecna.

Defending The Worst Scene In The Worst Episode Of Stranger Things

According to Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer, Will’s coming-out is “a really important scene…not just from a thematic point of view, but also a narrative point of view.” He says that “this show has always been about our characters overcoming evil” and that “Vecna…represents all the dark thoughts and the evil of society.” He said that for our heroes (including Will) to defeat Vecna, it was vitally important for them to start “embracing themselves, and then also embracing one another and coming together.”

Sibling and fellow Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer chimed in, saying that coming out “was the final step in Will’s journey” and that “Will is, in so many ways, the key to defeating Vecna.” Once the young man realizes the importance of self-acceptance, “he knows that he needs to” come out in front of everyone, a “final step” that “he finds the courage” to take. To this showrunner, the coming-out scene is “really the ultimate f*ck you you Vecna,” which he claims “was the intention of the scene.”

Good Intentions Are Not Enough To Save Bad Scenes

Whether this is a successful defense of Stranger Things’ most controversial scene is all a matter of perspective, of course: I never hated the scene for its subject matter. There’s nothing inherently wrong with having gay characters, and it makes sense that coming out would be a huge deal to a traumatized teenager in the 1980s. The Duffers clearly had good intentions with this scene, but there is often a major gulf between intention and execution. In this case, it’s clear that the road to a hellishly stupid scene was absolutely paved with good intentions.

The symbolic and thematic significance of Will Byers’ big scene doesn’t change the fact that it was weird for him to come out to a huge room that included people he never met…like, this is supposed to be an important and intimate moment, but there are so many people in the room that it looks like Will turned his sexual orientation into a show-and-tell exercise for a small classroom. The scene is also poorly-acted, something that is obvious when you compare Noah Schnapp’s performance to that of other child actors like Sadie Sink. Finally, the scene lasted forever, and it dragged the momentum of an already-slow season to a complete halt.

As a Stranger Things fan, I’m glad the Duffers chimed in on this controversial scene, but the blunt truth is that learning what they were trying to do doesn’t make a bad scene any better. Representation is and always will be important, but simply including gay characters in your show doesn’t matter if the writers just give them the worst possible scenes and dialogue. Remember, guys: virtue-signalling alone doesn’t make for a good story, and giving one-half of your gay characters the worst scene in the series is actually worse than giving them no scenes at all!