**Spoilers for Netflix’sStranger Things season 3.**
“It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” is the line that Mike (Finn Wolfhard) says to Will (Noah Schnapp) after he and Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) won’t stop talking about their respective breakups with Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) and Max (Sadie Sink) during a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Will, frustrated by the heteronormativity of it all, storms out in the rain. Mike runs after him and delivers the line that has launched a bunch of questions about Will’s sexuality.
Will is just a kid. Therefore, I don’t think we necessarily need to have a label to his sexuality, but seeing as how he’s a fictional character and we only have one other character on the show who is queer, Robin (lesbian), I can understand why people want to know. After all, while some kids know really young, others don’t. Plus, we don’t know how being in such a traumatic state so young (in the Upside Down) affected his growth. Also, him not liking girls could mean he’s gay, but he could also be on the ace spectrum, which would be really awesome, and one of my friends, who is ace, said that Will was “the ace representation we deserve.”
Schnapp spoke with The Wrap, saying that the comment and what it means for Will is really up to interpretation from the audience.
“While all the characters were out developing and growing up, Will was in the Upside Down and he was alone there, not interacting with or connected to his friends or the rest of the world. And when he got back, he expected everything to just go back to how it was before, how it was when he was normal and when he was a kid and he wanted to go back to the basement and play D&D.”
He continued to say, “All his friends have girlfriends and they’re out dating, and he just wants to have fun with his friends. You see in Episode 3, he just wants to play D&D in the basement, and now all of his friends have girlfriends and they are dating. And it’s kind of, when you hear Mike say that line, it’s really up to the audience to interpret it. I kind of just interpret it like he’s not ready to grow up and he doesn’t really want to move on to dating and relationships yet. He still wants to be a kid and play in the basement like he did in old times.”
Since season one, there has been speculation that Will was gay because of the language that was used while he was being bullied, and the beat taken after the “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls” line is very loaded. I think that Stranger Things needs to dedicate more time to Will’s character, and I think that regardless of whether his attitude towards his peers is due to his sexuality or emotional stuntedness, I think we need more time to spend time with him.
What did you think of the line?
Stranger Things, Season 3 (2019) pic.twitter.com/EQJjfqnUEX
— matt “matt” matt (@Matt_Jones46) July 5, 2019
(via The Wrap, image: Netflix)
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