#Holly needs to prove herself too but she's spared from my ire currently

[henrysglock]

I wasn't that asker but I agreed hard on condensing the cast, so now I have to ask: how would you, exactly? who's getting cut in the king james version of ST

Ough, a good question. I'm really waiting to see how the story ends before I make any concrete judgements, just in case there's something coming that cements certain characters as Necessary.

However.

I'd condense Eddie and Jonathan. We already had a town freak whose family carries a bad/creepy reputation. The only thing Eddie seems to do atp is deliver subtext, and it's subtext that could be delivered by the Byers family given all the fucked up things that have happened in association with them. Make Jonathan the snooty artsy guy, we'd see even more where Will gets it from.

I'm waiting to see what happens with ST5+TFS before I make any final judgements, but I even feel like the Munsons in general were very accessory. We already have a down-and-out "no one believes me" parent who knew the Creels (Wayne) in Joyce, we already have an absentee deadbeat dad (Alan) in Lonnie, and we already have a "creepy" high school senior making money on the side for his family in Jonathan. Jon and Lonnie were both suspected of killing Will right away, with varying degrees of seriousness. It wouldn't be a stretch to have people pin the ST4 deaths on him. It's in keeping with the "psycho older brother toooootally killed his younger sibling" Creel thing, so why not put the rest of Eddie's Creel subext into Jonathan? It would also pull the Byers family back into the center of the supernatural drama. Maybe then I could believe that ST5 is actually going to be "Will's season" 😂

Call him Eddie Byers instead of Jonathan, too, if you're an Edward Creel truther. [insert long tangent about the hypothetical Eddie Byers paralleling Edward Creel/the older brother version and Will paralleling Henry Creel/the younger brother version here]

I would also have kept the Byers family in Indiana, but w/e. That's my personal bone to pick until they give me a better reason why all that had to happen in Cali/Nevada.

Moving on:

I'm waiting to see what they end up doing with Vicki, but unless she's really important in some way that couldn't be fulfilled by Nancy...I'd remove her and make ronance a thing instead. Again, though: waiting to see what they do with her. She just feels very accessory at the moment. Fingers crossed she'll become more relevant.

I'm also very much waiting for them to all be congregated in Hawkins again so that we don't have a small army of minor antagonists that we have to deal with :// I get why it had to be like that, but it was also...A lot.

Also, I would have nixed Dottie in ST2. Everyone else in the Kali arc served, tbh, but she annoyed me and her subtext could have been reistributed 🤷🏼 (I hope we return to the situation with Ray Carroll, though, even in a small way. Like. Pleasepleasepleaseplease)