#also the ‘King abandoned his kingdom on an important quest but keeps getting waylaid on the path home and returns to find his home broken’

[wheeler-things]

No, no, but this is such a good point!

Also, Steve kind of sucked until he was no longer in a leadership position (ie. he goes from being King Steve to just being Steve and we see this transition happening in s2).

Similarly with Eddie, he’s shown to be at his worst when he’s in his Leader of Hellfire position, and at his best when he’s participating as part of a team later in the season.

Hell! Dustin’s trying to be a leader this season and it makes him objectively worse (not as a character, because I actually love it though it makes me scared for him, but as a person to be around, like, all the older teens are so over it and this subtly causes conflict) because nobody is tempering his ego/nobody else for him to turn to for support like there usually was in previous seasons— in s1 and s2 he was tempered by the fact that he actually respects Mike’s judgements and in s3 we started to see more of this Dustin but Hopper was able to put his foot down at the end of the season and modulate Dustin’s plan).

Even at the lab, Brenner, as the leader, is presented to us as the most culpable regardless of the people below him also participating in his wrongs. This makes Owens interesting because he has always been a sort of morally grey/questionable character but it also seems like he was less of an effective leader than Brenner even if Brenner and him were technically equals by s4, so I’m curious what we’ll see from Owens later (but even in s2, we see the doctors fighting with him in ways I cannot imagine them similarly fighting with Brenner).

The Mayor is corrupt.

The General in s4 is blatantly the bad guy.

Hell! Henry Creel was sympathetic or at least understandable as a child/as someone in the lab without power, but as soon as he HAS the power, he uses it for evil. And he’s at his worst when he is, functionally, the leader of the Upside Down.

The only people I can think of that we see in leadership roles who are not shown to be horrible are:

1) Chrissy (but we never see her acting as a leader to her team, so we’re only assuming she’s good at it because she’s nice, but being too nice can also be a flaw for a leader as well so this is inconclusive)

2) Callahan and Powell (but they have no authority— ultimately, they fail as leaders, despite being decent enough as the new heads of the police station, because they do not have the ability to command respect, which is why Jason, an actual leader, is able to storm in and take over control of the town meeting from them in a way that would never have happened if Hopper were there)

3) the principal from s1 (we simply don’t see enough of him to be able to judge, but he doesn’t seem to be very effective at controlling his students if nothing else because nobody ever gets punished for any of their antics in s1 and we don’t see what punishments Mike receives besides from his parents between s1 and s2– certainly he hasn’t created an environment where the kids feel comfortable talking to him)

Hopper is, I think, also kind of an example, but a more complicated one. He starts the show as a pretty poor chief, because of his alcoholism and general depression. This makes him dismissive, rude, and prone to using his authority to shirk his duties. In s2, he’s better but I’d note that he’s not perfect! Then in s3, he essentially disappears (not necessarily WRONG but functionally an abdication of his leadership role for at least a bit), also there’s that whole thing with him beating answers out of the mayor which I personally hate for a multitude of reasons, but which illustrates very clearly a large number of Hopper’s flaws as a leader (impatience, being prone to fits of anger and sometimes violence, etc). And a lot of this can actually be traced back to his conflict with Mike, funnily enough! Hopper’s not in touch with his emotions (honestly, after his daughter’s death, he probably intentionally severed that connection in himself— and because of the toxic masculinity he was brought up in, it was probably already a pretty loose connection to start with). Joyce tries to help him with this but he struggles to understand, so he falls back on inappropriately threatening Mike (yes, I think there’s also some combative dissonance in Hopper thee because he trusts and respects Mike in the battlefield so it’s hard to have Mike now acting up to his face like a bratty teen, but I do also think it’s filtered through this extreme discomfort with emotional vulnerability). And when does Hopper finally shed this? When he’s not the leader, in a Russian prison, in s4.

And then that just leaves Mike! Who is FASCINATING, because Mike Wheeler is at his best when he’s acting as the leader of the group, and his worst when he falls back and lets others direct things. Mike is a good leader for exactly the reasons you state— he doesn’t demand that anyone treat him that way (but he speaks with authority when he is confident of what he’s saying), he doesn’t generally insist on things being his way with no reason (though he’s not always good at explaining his reasons because he’s not perfect at ALL) and he listens to trusted council (Dustin, Will, Lucas, and El in particular— though I imagine an hope Max also counts on this list at this point we just didn’t see much of them in s4). And when he’s in his element, leading properly, the plot rewards him/the whole team because when he’s in that position, the team always wins. But as you point out, Mike gets taken for granted. His contributions are assumed. When his leadership is at its best, that’s seen as Mike being Mike and participating to the bare minimum of what can be expected of him, and when anything goes wrong, it’s on him.

So the fact that Will depicts Mike’s shield with a crowned heart? Extremely interesting, seeing as crowns, in heraldry, almost always indicate royalty/a reining monarch. So if Mike’s emblem is a crowned heart, then that doesn’t just mean that he’s the Heart of the Party (or just Will as the case may be), but also implies that he is, functionally, the King as well.

thinking about "why am i the bad guy" again and. uhm. all the other leader characters are the bad guys. angela. troy. jason. even eddie, to some extent, with how manipulative he was in that first scene. what does it mean. that mike's the only one who's given that level of trust and doesn't immediately abuse it? jason didn't listen when patrick said they should back off the hellfire club. troy didn't listen when his friend told him the cliff thing wasn't a good idea. eddie didn't listen when mike and dustin said they wanted to postpone dnd. dustin's "the party is a democracy" is like, kind of bullshit, but it's not a dictatorship either. they actually listen to each other. something something mike being taken for granted