#Billy Hargrove redemption arc

[catherine-the-doll-ballerina]

Not every evil character has to be redeemed. And no, there's nothing wrong with liking an asshole. Remember its all just fiction. It can't hurt you.

[velocitytimes2]

Love me some Billy Hargrove 🩷 Seriously though, some other nasty shit to complain about other than poor Billy

He needs a hug, 60+ hours of intense therapy, and a sno cone.

Also a good chance to talk about how trauma taints us forever. And is a lifelong healing process!

[bogwitchlesbian]

Billy Hargrove doesn’t need a redemption!

Not because he’s a perfect person who never did anything wrong, bc I’m not an idiot he fucked up yeah.

But because he’s a CHILD.

He died like 4 months after turning 18. Teenagers are still children.

Children don’t need redemption arcs, they need a stable environment, unconditional love, and for christs sake a good therapist.

Children don’t need redeeming. They’re fucking children.

[lorax-devito]

I need Lucas to say this to a flashback of Billy

[pendinganchor]

“we never see billy change his ways in canon”

because he dies saving all their lives?????????

[every-dayiwakeup]

Billy Hargrove's death was selfless, which means he died for others. But it's still not enough.

Say he ended up surviving the Mind Flayer. Would anything he does ever be enough to please this fandom?

I think we all know the answer to that.

It's very telling that if Billy had survived a majority of people would rather him go through a bunch of mandatory trials to fill some quota that let's be honest would never really be filled than separate him from his abusers so he can heal in a safe environment.

You'd rather have an abuse victim dance on hot coals for forgiveness than punish his abusers.

[strangerthingfanfic]

I love how people pick and choose who is capable of redemption. I mean Billy was an asshole but he was learning but supposedly only other assholes can have redemption like:

Homophobic Steve

Jackass Steve

Pervy Jonathan

Uncaring mother Joyce (first season towards Jonathan)

Drug addict Hopper

Racist and homophobic Mike

Suzie the liar and useless sister

Eddie the drug dealer (pay attention people he was selling hard drugs and he was about to sell a hard drug to Chrissy)

The hypocrisy is just too much to take sometimes🤦‍♀️

It's not Billy's fault they killed him the minute he learned to live

[toobusybeingdelulu]

yeah yeah we know all about frenemies madwheeler, but may I present to you… frenemies wheelgrove

[marypsue]

Ahh also as an addendum to my previous ask about the age swap (which I might’ve accidentally labeled as the body swap fic due to the foibles of being awake unexpectedly early ), I was curious what your criticisms are regarding Robin and Will’s treatments by the Duffers? I know you’ve alluded to being bothered by both but I’d be curious to hear more ( if you have the time/hankering!)

Hooboy. Okay. Buckle in. 

Obviously this is going to be a combination of actual literary analysis and Big Feelings That I Have, so like, please don’t take this as any kind of moral dictum on what to or not to watch, or how to or how not to interpret what you watch. Also, a lot of what makes me uneasy and unhappy about how canon deliberately handles queerness (as opposed to when it does queer things apparently by accident, which as you may have noticed, I have considerable amounts of fun with) has to do with behind-the-scenes context I’ve read about, so there’s a certain degree of Telephone involved. And I’m still only halfway through season four. There’s just so fucking much of it. 

With all that said. 

The behind-the-scenes context I’m most specifically concerned with are the season-one pitch bible(? I think that’s what it’s called) (which, it should be noted, ended up diverging in some quite significant ways from what ended up in the show) where the Duffers first raised the possibility that Will might be gay, and the anecdote that Joe Keery and Maya Hawke were the ones who decided Robin should be queer and had to really push for it and wrote and choreographed that scene in the bathroom. Put the two together, and it tells you that the Duffers planned that there would be One (potentially) Gay Character in their show. 

And that character was the one they spent an entire season directing violent, vicious, eventually outright murderous homophobic hatred at through the mouthpiece of a couple of bullies. You can say what you want about revenge narratives and those characters ultimately getting their comeuppance, but for Me Personally, it sucks all the fun and escapism out of season one to watch it thinking that those bullies only got punished when they aimed that vitriol at someone to whom it didn’t literally apply. Also I still have to sit through however many episodes of that vicious homophobia onscreen regardless, so, like, that’s a walk in the park anyway. /sarcasm 

And then there’s that whole bad business in season three, where it’s never been quite clear to me if we’re supposed to see Mike as having been in any way in the wrong. Kind of scuppers the argument, to me, that we’re supposed to be on Will’s side. And season four, which so far has had Will tagging along after people who are supposed to be his best friends but mostly don’t seem to give a single damn about him, doing absolutely nothing but looking morose and sullen and tragic and *coughcough* Artistic, and causing Problems for the nice straight couple. 

(Tangential to the point I’m coming to, but also, my son deserves better than to be reduced to a soggy cardboard standee with ‘GAY’ scrawled across it in magic marker the way season four seems to be angling toward. All the Byers, but especially the Byers boys, deserve better than season four seems interested in giving them. But I digress.) 

Also. I love Robin. If you follow me, you probably know that. I’m a hardcore, ride-or-die Robin girl. But. With Robin, from what I’ve heard of the context, the Duffers never intended for her to be queer. They wrote a girl who was smart and funny and sharp and talented and a little bit mean and a little bit insecure and a little bit weird but in an interesting, endearing way - as a love interest for Steve. 

And then, as soon as season four rolled around, once they’d been pushed into making her canonically, on-screen queer (in a beautiful, tender, heartfelt, true-feeling scene that they didn’t fucking write), suddenly she’s had a complete personality transplant. Suddenly, she’s an awkward, bumbling, annoying loser who’s only funny when she’s the butt of the joke, who’s no good at anything and who nobody really likes except maybe for Steve, an outcast even amongst the freaks. When she does do something smart or competent, everyone around her reacts with shock, like it’s wildly out of character instead of how her character was originally written. One of these versions of Robin was written with ‘gay person’ in mind, and it unfortunately wasn’t the one we were obviously supposed to like. 

In both cases, I get the feeling that the storytelling issues stem from this like...assumption that queerness equals isolation and misery and tragedy, and that there’s nothing to queerness outside of that. That there’s something inherent to queerness, something pitiable but repulsive, that causes the isolation and misery and tragedy (not that those things are imposed from outside, by, say, violent homophobia). That it would be absurd to imagine that queerness could ever be joyful, or playful, or that someone might ever, given the chance to choose, not choose to be straight instead. Or that there could be enormous friendship and community and heart and pride in queerness, or even that queer people might find friendship and community and strength in each other. Or even fucking talk to each other, ever. 

Which is especially infuriating, because the whole central theme of season one (besides surface appearances being deceiving) is that community and care between people who are very different but discover they have more in common than there is that separates them is what saves the day! That love comes in all kinds of forms, and they’re all important, and that love can be stronger than fear! 

But apparently, according to the Duffers, queer love doesn’t count and queer community doesn’t exist. It’s just isolation, misery, and tragedy, and I guess we the watchers are supposed to sit outside of it and pity Them for it (and be quietly, sneakily, a little bit nastily grateful that it’s not happening to Us). Because of course nobody watching the show is queer. Of course. This show is made for normal people. 

It’s part of the same attitude I’ve also seen play out with the Duffers’ inability to just let a white dude be bad. Oh, they want to talk a big game about how they’re on the side of the freaks, and bullies are bad, and everybody should be respected and appreciated for who they are. But when it cuts down to the bone, when applying that precept to a girl or a person of colour or a queer person makes a straight white guy come off as a monster, they keep trying to dodge it. 

The more antagonists they try desperately to rehab without ever acknowledging why they were antagonists in the first place, the more it starts to look like they simply don’t really believe that the people those antagonists hurt really matter. That, somewhere deep down where the assumptions that are so baked in you don’t even realise they’re assumptions live, they don’t really believe that girls, or Black kids, or queer people are as fundamentally human and deserving of respect and compassion as their beloved awful straight white men are. That what they really think about bullies is that bullies are bad because the bullies picked on them, instead of the kinds of people who deserved it.

(See also: that time a twelve- or thirteen-year-old Sadie Sink didn’t want to have to do a kiss in the Snow Ball scene, so the Duffers, who had just been joking about having her do it, actually made her do it. For multiple takes. Specifically because she didn’t want to. And then later related that anecdote to the press. Because they thought it was funny.)

Anyway. Personally, I’d prefer canon just never say anything definitive on the matter of Will’s sexuality and stop trying to push the narrative in that direction, so I don’t have to watch the Duffers spectacularly fumble yet another attempt at Writing About Marginalised Groups. 

(Also, this is absolutely not me saying Watch A Different Show - I’m here writing fanfic for this stupid show, it’d be pretty fucking rich of me to try to tell people to stop watching it. But I’d really love for many of its fans to get some more exposure to less-mainstream, more deliberately queer literature and film, so y’all can see what it really feels like to be seen and acknowledged and loved by a story, on purpose. I get it! I do! I too have wanted very badly to feel like something I loved, loved me back. 

But you don’t have to content yourselves with scraps. And you definitely don’t have to be so concerned with those scraps that you blame your friends, cousins, siblings, brothers in arms for ‘stealing’ some kind of ‘representation’ from you by asking to be seen and acknowledged and loved as well. The bastards who’ve been withholding that recognition from all of us would love nothing more than to watch with amusement, gorging themselves on a banquet, while we tear each other apart over a couple of discarded bones. Don’t give them the satisfaction. We don’t have to be isolated, pitiable, pathetic, miserable tragedies. Put the hollow promises of exclusionism and respectability down. There is queer art and literature and film and community and joy and love in abundance that you don’t have to beg anyone for, and you are invited to participate. This is me inviting you to participate. 

And cordially inviting the Duffers to meet me in the woods behind the 7-Eleven.)

...

tl;dr the way the Duffers treat queerness when they do it on purpose feels like a combination of othering, contempt, and misery porn, and I hate it. And that, in a nutshell, is the rant I’ve been sitting on for the last two-and-a-bit years. I’m getting down off the cafeteria table now. 

[liatieska]

Let's believe that somehow, someway, the gods decided Billy survived his encounter with the Mind Flayer.

Doctors are saying he won't last long, if at all, but he's awake. They tell his family they need to say goodbye now. Max is there in a heartbeat, followed by a sollum Susan. Neil doesn't arrive.

Billy is being tube fed and attached to all sorts of machines. The only thing keeping him together is the snitches in his chest and the bandages covering them. He's a dead man walking, for how long no one knows.

Max is crying, telling him she's sorry, she's so fucking sorry, she should have told him, warned him, been more attentive to him. She's shushed when Billy carefully takes her hand and squeezes it, however weakly.

"I'm sorry I couldn't protect you, Maxine. I wish I was better to you." His eyes are blown, trembling weakly. It's so odd, seeing your previous asshole step-brother so weak, hair matted and frizzy.

"Promise me, Maxine, that if this shit continues you'll be careful. Promise me." Through strangled breaths Max nods.

"I promise, I promise Billy." Finally, he smiles, a small one, but it's there. She visits him every day, the psychic girl with her occasionally, sometimes her other friends.

He passes away in the night, holding Max's hand, two weeks after. Max cries when she wakes up, cries days later, then at his funeral, and for days onward.

Now she's here, baiting Vecna, and it isn't going well. He's caught her and she isn't hearing Kate Bush, God dammit Lucas. She's not ready to die, she promised Billy, she's not ready to go. Holding his hand out, Vecna goes to sink his disgusting fingers into her skin. Then there's a noise.

A bird, but that's strange. The only flying creature she knows of is those bats, but birds? It's a loud squawk, angry one it sounds like. It seems like Vecna is confused as well and Max watches as a second later, a large bird engulfed in flames slames into Vecna's side. It propels the man through a wall, away from Max.

She gasps, back in control of her own body. The flaming bird is huge, about 6 feet tall. It's staring down at her. Slowly, the figure morphs, and in a burst of flames he's standing before her. Billy.

"Hey, Shitbird."

"Billy!" She leaps into his arms, already having tears rolling down her cheeks. In the background, she heard the melody of Running Up That Hill.

"I thought you didn't like crying. Come on, we gotta go." He took her hand and pulled her through the house towards the music.

"Billy, Billy you have to come with me!" He looked down at her, a sad smile on his face.

"I can't. Not physically, anyway." He looked behind them before pulling off his necklace, replacing his hand with it. Max hiccuped..

"I'll be here for you, always, Max. I'm your shit older brother, remember?" Max could hear Lucas calling for her. A small laugh escaped her.

"I'm your shit younger sister." Billy smiled and ruffled her hair as she passed through to reality, gasping awake as Lucas held her close.

Enclosed in her hand was the guitar pic necklace.

[upsidedown29]

Title: The Complex Charisma of Billy Hargrove: A Journey from Villain to Redemption!

Hey there, Tumblr fam! Let's talk about the enigmatic and controversial character from Stranger Things - Billy Hargrove! 🌟✨

Billy, portrayed by the incredibly talented Dacre Montgomery, burst into our lives with his rockstar looks and rebellious attitude. But let's dig deeper, shall we? There's so much more to this complex character than meets the eye!

At first glance, Billy was the classic '80s bad boy, with his slicked-back hair, leather jacket, and that signature smolder. He had a knack for stirring up trouble and was often seen as the show's antagonist. But here's the thing, folks, Billy's story goes beyond just being the "villain" of Hawkins.

As the series progressed, we got glimpses into Billy's troubled past, offering a glimpse into the vulnerability beneath his tough exterior. We discovered the strained relationship with his father, his own insecurities, and the emotional scars he carried. These glimpses allowed us to empathize with him on a deeper level.

Remember the Scoops Troop mission in Season 3? Billy faced the Mind Flayer's possession and overcame it to protect those he cared about. His redemption arc showcased his resilience and capacity for growth, proving that there was more to him than just being a stereotypical bully.

Let's not forget that epic sauna showdown! Billy valiantly fought against the Mind Flayer's control to save Eleven, proving that he had a heart of gold buried beneath all that bravado. His ultimate sacrifice was a turning point for his character, leaving an indelible mark on our hearts.

Billy's journey reminds us that people are not always what they seem, and that everyone deserves a chance at redemption. This complex character teaches us the importance of understanding and compassion, even for those we initially perceive as villains.

So, Tumblr fam, let's discuss! What are your thoughts on Billy Hargrove? Did you find his character development compelling? Share your theories, fan art, or favorite Billy moments! Let's celebrate the multifaceted nature of this captivating character together! 🙌❤️

[justadesibifangirl]

So, I was a bit late watching ST bc when it first came out I was too young. I've read fanfics but somehow never found out that Billy fucking died?! I knew he was flayed but like how did I not know he would die? 😭 I was not prepared for this and now I'm crying my eyes out bc he could've gotten one of the best redemption arcs ever!! Like why did they have to kill him off?!! 😭😭😔😭😭

[elowmojo]

I would have loved to see Billy join the group. Trying hard despite his flaws. Being a victim of Vecna's curse. Vecna would have tormented him because of his traumas. I would have loved to see him get closer to Max. 😭

I don’t know why I’ve never seen these photos but I’m a little upset about it. I would’ve made them my entire personality sooner like why didn’t y’all TELL ME????????

[pitrsattabhaadmeinjaa]

my guy, nothing is wrong with billy fans nor any other fans. Let people enjoy whatever character they want without harrassing anyone, ok? I'm no fan of his character but his fans are chill and lovely as fuck, so relax a lil'. As a neutral Stranger Things fan seeing these posts is getting annoying. STOP SHAMING PEOPLE. You're ruining the fandom

baby just block me if i’m “ruining” the fandom

[stevesbipanic]

Friendly reminder that I hate Billy Hargrove and do not ship him with anyone and never will, I'm glad the racist character died and his character did not have a redemption arc.

[niragisqueenofhearts]

men i could fix ch.4

It's been a hot minute, how y'all been? Good? Bad?... You breathing?? Okay good. Anywhooooo, I'm here so y'all know what that means.

BILLY HARGROVE

A favorite of the masses. (me)

So, what can I say about Mr. William Hargrove.... Well...

Billy was a misunderstood man who just needed a little bit of loving. The End.

Kidding, I'm not gonna leave y'all like that calm down.

"Billy is the high school racist who bullied little kids for no reason, I'm glad he's dead!"

Yeah well you're just the victim blaming cunt and you should trip on a knife-

First off, Billy was abandoned by his mother, the only person who actually gave a shit about him, and was left stuck with his puckering asshole of a father who thought it was okay to use his child as a punching bag.

And like usual children who are having problems at home, he took it with him everywhere. That whole, "Oh I'm tough" demeanor he put on at school? Yeah, that was a mask to protect himself from other possible people who'd try to fuck with him like his father did, only difference is that he could actually fight back.

Now y'all can argue about this all you want but the fact is, after his mom left, Billy was raised with anger therefore he projected anger. He was angry. It's the nature vs nurture law sweeties, look it up. Next!

Second, Billy did what any other older brother would do, protect his sister. Regardless of if Billy portrayed that he hated Max or didn't, he was protecting her. For example, when he went to that house to confront Steve and the others, we may have seen it as Max hanging out with her friends, but you know how Billy saw it? His young stepsister in a house filled with random guys he doesn't know, not to mention Steve, a fucking high schooler, hanging out with little kids... Quite suspish if you're outside looking in if you ask me...

You could argue that the only reason he did go to get Max was that his father beat the ever-living shit out of him, but either way, that is still a very valid reason, cause whether you like it or not, Billy was trying to survive his father and avoid further abuse from him.

Third, the SECOND this man turned 18, you got fucking 40-year-old MOTHERS throwing themselves at him. I don't care how you paint it.

"Oh, Billy made the first move! Billy Initiated the date!"

That was a grown ass woman grooming a child, and fact is the only reason she didn't go on the date was that she realized the consequences of actions would catch up to her, instead of realizing that she was a grown ass woman planning on taking advantage of a child... okay. (Fuck you karen.)

Fourth, Billy wasn't racist. Period. I’m not gonna fight anybody on this, there is literally no valid point whatsoever that could confirm this whether in the show or fandom websites.

In conclusion, Billy was a scared boy who grew up in a house of hatred, anger, physical and verbal abuse. He projected that anger just like any person could and tried his best to survive his environment.

Billy could've had a wonderful redemption arc (That didn't include him sacrificing his life) Had he had someone, fucking anyone by his side to just sit, talk and listen. Point. Blank. Period.

I christen thee fixable.

(I could definitely fix him.)