Is Will Byers From 'Stranger Things' Actually Gay?

When Stranger Things first started, the main cast comprised of prepubescent kids fighting off the creatures of the Upside Down. We have watched Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven or El, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, and Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson grow up into their late teens over the course of the four seasons of the Netflix show. 

The kids went through the ups and downs of going through puberty and are now in high school. El and Mike start going out at the start of the third season and we see their puppy love flourish. Lucas and Max also get together in the third season and Dustin also starts dating Suzie. The one person we don't see with any romantic interests is Will. The boy who gets swallowed into the Upside Down in the first season. In the latest season, we see a different side of Will and fans are curious to know what it has to say about his sexuality. 

“I feel like they never really address it or blatantly say how Will is,” Schnapp has said of his character. “I think that’s the beauty of it, that it’s just up to the audience’s interpretation, if it’s Will kind of just refusing to grow up and growing up slower than his friends, or if he is really gay.” Will's dissatisfaction with not having his group of friends just as they were at 11 has been addressed in a previous instance as well. Brown added, “Can I just say, it’s 2022 and we don’t have to label things. I think what’s really nice about Will’s character is that he’s just a human being going through his own personal demons and issues. So many kids out there don’t know, and that’s OK. That’s OK to not know. And that’s OK not to label things.”

While the actors have let the audience interpret Will's sexuality as they wish, the Duffer Brothers, the showrunners have assured fans that they will be addressing Will's sexuality by the end of the season. The fourth season of Stranger Things will be released in two parts. The second volume is set to release on July 1 and will have two episodes. The first part with seven episodes is available to stream on Netflix now. "This is where it gets tricky since we haven't released the whole season yet," Matt told TVLine. "I just want people to watch the final two episodes."

Ross added, "We have story arcs and we have character arcs. How we structured [the season], we've released the first two acts of this story. The final act, which is the last two episodes, resolves a lot of things, both character, and story, and then some of it is also setting up for our final season." While it is not okay to assume or speculate about anyone's sexuality, we can never go wrong with more diverse representation in popular media.