#as an el girly i was devastated that she was forced to rely on mike to beat vecna. that was so cliche and stupid imo

[mlchaelwheeler]

more crazy hours but what bothered me the most about mike's monologue being superimposed over el fighting vecna is that if you juxtaposition that scene to max's scene in ep4 of her fighting vecna's curse is that it's her own love that saves her, it's her love for her friends that motivates her and wills her to overcome his influence despite being suicidal. compare it to el's character arc where she's sacrificed her wellbeing to save her friends by learning to regain her powers and confront her trauma, which leads you to believe she's attempting to reclaim her life by making her own decisions. how does it make sense that to win she needed a boy to tell her that he loves her. especially from a boy who couldn't previously say he loved her until it really mattered, and his reason for not saying it is he was scared she'd figure out he's a boring loser 💀 both scenarios might be cliché but one has real personal empowerment for a character, the other is a bad YA trope.

The way that you're so right! Max escaped because she was able to think of her favorite memories all on her own. It's only when she thought of these herself that she was able to see Lucas/Dustin/Steve calling to her in the graveyard. It was Max all by herself that allowed her to beat Vecna and escape.

Yet with El, she isn't able to use her own memories (of which she has plenty: Hopper caring for her during S2-3, the party taking her in in S1, her moments with Mike, her bond with Joyce, her friendship with Max, sibling moments with Will and Jonathan, etc) and is instead downgraded to not being able to defeat Vecna unless she hears that Mike loves her.

Even though (as a byler shipper) I despised Mike's monologue, the part that disturbed me the most was that El was forced to become dependent on someone again. She spent all of vol 1 + 4x08 gaining independence and escaping people who held power over her, which should've led to a final showdown with Vecna in which she's independent enough to use her own strength and memories to defeat him. She could've drawn on the power of love (not romantic) in order to do this, since this is something Henry/Vecna never had. El has been shown nothing but love since she escaped the lab, so she should have plenty of memories to draw from. Yet, the narrative didn't give her this opportunity to use this sense of newfound independence and instead forced her to depend on Mike's feelings (which were actually Will's feelings for Mike, but I digress).

Mike spent vol 1 telling El that he thinks of her as a superhero, not that he loves her. Obviously, El doesn't want to hear that she's a superhero. She is well aware she has powers, and that's what makes her different. She just wants Mike to see her for who she is and love her for that. Instead, what does Mike say in his monologue? "You're my superhero." Like. ??? That's supposed to be comforting? Mike literally just recycled what Will told him and then repeated it for El. Half of it didn't even make sense with stuff we know/have seen from S1-2. The only thing that makes sense is if Mike is telling El what he thinks she wants/needs to hear to defeat Vecna and live, not what he actually feels.

Mike's monologue falls so short. He both reduces El to someone who is solely dependent on her boyfriend and brutally disses Will by saying the day he went missing was when his own life began. It's clear that those aren't Mike's real feelings, so I'm so confused why this monologue was so hyped up. It wasn't even good. It's clear Finn can deliver great monologues--look at the shed scene from S2! Now that is how you pull off an emotional monologue. What he said in vol 2 just felt so disingenuous and hurt both El and Will's characters, as well as regressing his own.

#as an el girly i was devastated that she was forced to rely on mike to beat vecna. that was so cliche and stupid imo #she just escaped brenner! she is independent! let her find her own love for others and channel THAT!!!! #sorry i have so many feelings about the monologue. and they're all negative bc it sucked so bad #eleven hopper #mike wheeler #byler #ask sarah #anon tag #st4 spoilers