SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from Stranger Things 5 Volume 2.
Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) takes a big leap of faith in the penultimate episode of Stranger Things 5.
After escaping Vecna’s mind invasion, Will realizes that he’ll continue to be vulnerable to the monster unless he comes clean about a secret he’s been keeping. So, rather than continue to let Vecna pray on his guilt and shame, he takes control of his own destiny. In a moving scene in Episode 7, “The Bridge,” Will comes out as gay in front of all of his friends and family.
“It was so freeing. I mean, there’s been so much build up for this scene for so long. Since, I would argue, episode one of the first season,” Schnapp tells Deadline. “So getting to finally have that moment and just have that dialogue… Will is always speaking through so much of his facial expressions, but to actually verbalize his emotions and express them to everyone was so freeing to finally get to do.”
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While this is the first time that Will has said out loud that he doesn’t like girls, creators Matt and Ross Duffer seemed to be dropping hints regarding his sexuality in earlier seasons. Throughout Season 5, it became much more obvious when Will found out about Robin’s (Maya Hawke) relationship with Vickie (Amybeth McNulty) and began peppering his friend with questions about how she came to terms with her own sexuality.
But, it isn’t until he’s tortured again by Vecna that he realizes the only way forward is to open up about this part of his identity. In part, Schnapp says, Will refrained from doing so sooner because, even though he’d come to accept his sexuality, he was still grappling with his feelings for his best friend, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard).
By the time he comes clean, Schnapp thinks he’s made peace with the fact that Mike is likely not going to reciprocate those feelings — a realization he says felt quite relatable.
“He accepts his own identity by the first volume, and that’s what allows him to unleash these powers,” Schnapp explains. “But then, like he says, it takes him through kind of Volume 2 to really understand that it was never about [Mike], it’s about himself. I mean, I think it was just really well done and really authentic to how the story unfolds. I know I could definitely relate to some of those feelings of being in love with a best friend who’s not in love with you. It feels [like a] realistic representation of being queer and growing up.”
Schnapp has been very vocal about his thoughts on Will’s sexuality, though it was never explicitly confirmed by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer before now, which has only fueled online discussion as fans began to suspect that it might play a pivotal role in his Season 5 arc. As he pointed out, the series has been alluding to this moment since Season 1, when Will’s friends used to tease him about not liking girls.
Now, creators Matt and Ross Duffer admit the scene is “something we’ve been building to for a long time,” as the latter tells Deadline.
“I think mostly we were nervous, as we just wanted to do right by Noah. Obviously, we’ve been working with him for so long, since he was a little kid, and we knew that this scene, obviously, we’ve talked about it over the years with him,” Ross continued. “We knew it was important, and we all wanted to get it right. There’s not a scene, I don’t think, in the entire series that we spent as long on as we did that coming out scene, just working it and working it until it felt right to us.”
How did they know when they got it right? Getting the seal of approval from the actor who has been playing the character for a decade and arguably knows him better than anyone.
“The litmus test was giving it to Noah, but then seeing how he responded to it and reacted to it gave us confidence,” Ross added.
Schnapp says that, in some ways, Will’s coming out felt parallel to his own, allowing him to draw from his own experience to access his character’s emotions for that moment and “make it feel so real.” Still, there were some cultural and political differences in the 40-year span between the two boys’ revelations that the actor wanted to ensure were taken seriously as well.
“[It was about] making sure I really understood the environment and the landscape that I’m declaring this in, where the AIDS epidemic was rampant, the Reagan administration wouldn’t even acknowledge that gay was a real word. If you even so much as came out, people thought you were sick and were contagious,” he said.
Will has a genuine concern that he “could be abandoned and lose everything,” Schnapp says, “so just having the stakes in my head that I really wanted to make sure I got right.”
“I just, of course, wanted it to feel as authentic as possible. It’s such an important scene, because it’s going to affect so many real young Wills out there struggling with their own identity, and I wanted it to be perfect for them and do justice to this character, which has been leading up to this for so long. So, yeah, just making it feel as authentic and natural as possible,” he continued.
During the scene, Will breaks down as he confesses that Vecna had tried to convince him that his loved ones wouldn’t stand by him if they knew the truth. While he was trapped in Vecna’s mindscape, he says the monster showed him a false reality where he lost several of them to this admission. It wasn’t that they outright rejected him, but according to Vecna’s vision of the future, many began to slowly distance themselves from him once he revealed his full self. He says he hopes that, by telling them the truth, he can prove to himself — and to Vecna — that won’t happen.
While trepidatious at first, once Will begins his monologue, the words just start pouring out of him, almost uncontrollably.
“He had [the scene] months in advance, and he just worked it and worked it,” Ross Duffer recalls. “I remember him telling us…he wanted to not even have to think about the words on the day, because it would just allow him to sort of access this part of himself where he’s not thinking about the language of it all, he’s just letting the emotion come through. That’s exactly what we did, and we’re so proud of him [and] what he accomplished on that thing.”
To his relief, Will is met with unwavering support from everyone in the room. And, when it came time to film the scene, so, too, was Schnapp. To capture both Schnapp’s performance and the reactions of the rest of the cast took an entire 12-hour production day, after which Matt Duffer says the actor “looked like he was about to collapse.”
Even when the camera was firmly on Schnapp, the rest of the cast made sure to be there for every single take. Likewise, Schnapp repeated the lengthy speech several times with the same fervor when the cameras were focused on coverage of everyone else.
“He poured everything into every single take,” Matt said. “I think that brought out these incredible performances in [the cast], and I think they got lost in what he was saying, and it was moving them in a very real way, because Noah was very, very, very emotional that day, and very moving.”
As a result, says Shawn Levy, who directed the episode with the Duffers, “the thing that makes that scene even more beautiful and memorable is the reactions of the other characters and actors.”
Throughout Will’s speech, the camera cuts repeatedly to Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and Robin, who are both beaming with pride at his extraordinary display of vulnerability, and the rest of the teenager’s closest confidantes — all of whom are giving them their undivided attention as he pours his heart out to them.
Usually, “it’s always so loud and chaotic on set, especially when the whole cast is there. There is no silence. Everyone’s messing around. Everyone’s making jokes,” Schnapp says. But, on that day, “you could hear a pin drop.”
“They were so respectful and gave me so much space to get into the character, which I really appreciated. I didn’t really get to fully take note of all their reactions, just because there’s so many people in the room, and I’m so emotional,” he continued. “So it really only hit me after, when I watched it, seeing how genuine it felt. And then, of course, when we cut the cameras, Charlie and I started hugging and crying for real. So it definitely hit home.”
Will’s coming out is a big milestone not only in his personal life but also, presumably, in the fight against Vecna. As for how things will pan out in that department, Schnapp is staying quiet for now.
“I guess you’re gonna have to wait and see,” he teased. “I’m excited to to share it with the world.”
The finale of Stranger Things arrives on December 31.