#byers hopper family

[bylerblogger]

Will Byers is going to beat up someone in season 5 btw.

[foreverautumn89]

Jonathan's mix tape for Will S1

When you watch the scene from S1 when Will is in the hospital and just came back from the upside down and Jonathan already has a new mix tape already made for Will and you ask yourself how he made that so fast when he just spent a large portion of time thinking Will was dead.

And you realize that Jonathan was still making mix tapes for Will to listen to after he thought Will was dead and never coming back.

Realizing that Jonathan would have just listened to that alone in his room crying and thinking of Will who'd he never see again.

[brionysea]

you guys don't get it. no one's giving mike a shovel talk once he starts dating will. no one. not even hopper

can you imagine mike wheeler, a queer boy in the 80s, knowing the byers family since he was like five or six years old and getting along with them fine, until he starts dating will and then suddenly they're saying they'll kill him if he fucks up? right after he's trusted them with the life threatening knowledge that he's in a relationship with another boy?

this being the same kid who almost died for standing up to homophobia (which was about will but directed at mike) when he was 12?

no. never ever happening.

not a single person in this family is that clueless. joyce would've ripped hopper a new one if he admitted to so much as yelling at mike. jonathan understands will's queerness and the necessity of keeping some things secret. hopper saw the possibility of will's disappearance being a hate crime and didn't stop pursuing the case. el saved mike's life like a billion times

no, they're not giving the queer kid who's just come out to them in the middle of the aids pandemic a shovel talk. they're just not.

[michaelinprogress]

Will going to Jonathan’s room at night when he was little asking to sleep with him ☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️☹️

Jonathan going into Will’s room post-upside down and silently getting into his bed cus he knows he needs him but won’t ask (Jonathan needs it too) 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

[catwiphone]

yeah im doing so fine rn hahah

[byler-alarmist]

No, the naming thing with the Hopper-Byers family is too weird for it not to mean something.

Jim, Joyce, Jonathan, Jane, and.... Will?

C'mon, what are the chances the completed family unit were all J names but Will. It's WEIRD

[groovinrightalong]

Thinking about Hopper and Will…

[curiositydoorunlocked]

Every so often I’ll remember that Will said “Mom’s work” instead of “my mom’s work,” and even though they’re fighting in the scene, it always makes me so happy. El has a mom! 🥹

[friendsdontlieokay]

To the people who say that Jonathan doesn't care about El, let me remind you that Jonathan was the one who decided to rescue El, he was the one to make the plan and he was the one who drove across the country to get her back. Sure, he isn't as friendly to her as he is with Will or he would be with her if Joyce adopted her in the first seasons but he is Jonathan Byers dude, the protective sense especially for his siblings comes number 1 at his priority list plus caring about his siblings is engraved well and permanently in his system, it's like his default.

[phinamina]

[onlyhereforbylerlol]

Random thought bc I'm now rewatching s4: a while back, I saw someone say that Joyce and Will shouldn't have let El do her project of hopper bc they knew that she would get bullied for it but I assume that Will probably did say something about it to her but she got defensive and started being stubborn about it and Will didn't want to hurt her feelings so he probably just dropped it. Idk just something I thought about.

[foreverautumn89]

Karen and Jonathan need more scenes together

Karen's dynamic with Jonathan is so cute. Their scenes together are so rare but its clear she adores Jonathan. Words cant describe how much I appreciate this woman for always being so kind to Jonathan when the rest of the town isn't [I mean Hawkins townspeople not main characters].

Karen coming to visit Joyce and check in on her in S1E3: How is Jonathan holding up? She is one of the rare few concerned about his well being at that time and asking about him wanting to make sure hes ok.

s1e8

KAREN: Hey, boys.

- Hey, Mrs. Wheeler.

Hey, wish your mom a merry Christmas for me, okay?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, thank you. Uh, merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

S2E3

Jonathan?

Mrs. Wheeler.

-What a pleasant surprise. [So cute how shes so happy to see Jonathan there]

---

- Bye! It's good to see you.

She loves Jonathan so much. It's so adorable. I love her mother son dynamic with him and we need a lot more scenes of it.

[secrettellerssociety]

[andy4yippee]

What do you think would happen with Will on November 6th every year? Like how do you think he’ll deal with it? Ik he’ll have a lot of flashbacks and stuff, and a lot of sensory overloads/meltdowns. It’s so sad to think abt what he goes through on the anniversary of that day. What do you think Mike would do to help? Or Joyce/Jonathan?

i think that mike, joyce, el, hopper and Jonathan would spend the day with him. they'd draw together, go on walks, mike would go on a bike ride with him, then they'd talk about it under a shaded tree. jonathan would make him a mixtape, and they'd all fall asleep together on a couch watching his favorite movie. (or he falls asleep next to mike!) :-)

[erikiara80]

Theory: the car crash in the winter of 1976 (Part I)

More here

I've been working a lot on this theory, and I keep finding things. In this post I'm going to focus on the hidden references to 1976. In Part II I'll talk about the hints at the accident.

I think there are many hints that there might've been a car crash in the past, and that that changed everything. Maybe, after the accident, a wrinkle in time and space created a different timeline-timeloop in which two babies swapped places in the hospital/lab. Maybe the girl we know as El was born stillborn, and Will Byers was the subject of the experiments, as the newspaper in 1x08 suggests. But his death and the experiments created a wrinkle in time and now El now exists and has taken Will's place as the lab kid. Maybe that's why there are hints that they both died in the past and are so connected. There are many possibilities, I don't rule out anything.

If the theory is correct, that means that El wasn't originally abducted at birth. She was brought back, powers made her "crawl backwards", like Steve says to Nancy in S4 (here)

and "she was swapped in the hospital (to tell you the truth)" like Karen says in S3. It's interesting that Karen says in the hospital, and not at birth, and in S4 Brenner calls the lab hospital.

The flashback of Sara's death could be an altered memory of what happened to Will and El after the accident. Or maybe there's even a bigger twist about her, but I won't talk about it here.

@chirpsythismorning noticed something interesting. When El saves Max, the camera rotates counterclockwise. And her arm reminds of the hand of a clock. Same counterclockwise rotation when Brenner dies. Going back in time. Bringing someone back.

But why in winter, and why in 1976?

There are many references to ice, feeling cold and freezing to death, but both the gates weren't opened in winter. So they're hiding something else.

El says that she comes from a bad place, and the boys say that it's Sweden, a cold sub-zero place. Bad place-> frozen lake, or the accident in the lake is the reason she ended up in another bad place, the lab?

The lyrics California dreamin' on such a winter day, in this scene that parallels Brenner and Ten scene in 4x01.

The last line in S4, "It's snowing" while Max is in the hospital.

And here the hints about 1976.

S1: The reporter says that the authorities suspect that Will was victim of foul play and that seven years before ('76) another person drowned in the quarry (*) S2: Lucas tells Max that a very decomposed body was found there.

Castle Byers flashback. Will doesn't get too scared anymore. Joyce jokes about her witch and he says that he's not five anymore (he was five in 1976). Joyce's witch could be a reference to the Witch of the West. In S1 Hopper calls the lab Emerald City. Also, in Castle Byers there are a rainbow, a stuffed lion and a microscope -> connection to the lab?

Possible hint at Lonnie's involvement in the "accident". When Jon was nine/ten he made him kill a rabbit, an animal associated with El and Alice/Henry. Jon was born in 1967, so the rabbit died (there was an accident) in '76. I also think it's not a coincidence that it's Jon, a boy worried about his brother, who sees Barb disappear in a pool. Jon says he cried for a week. He mourned that little rabbit...

Also. When he tells Nancy about the rabbit, he says that he's a fan of Thumper. And in the Nancy and Steve dialogue about crawling backwards, Steve says that what he needed was a thump on his head, to finally start crawling forward.

First day of kindergarten ('76) Will was swinging by himself. Swing sets are associated with both Willel and the Creels, and one of the swings is always broken or missing. If I'm right, this beautiful Byler moment could hint that Will shouldn't have been alone that day. A kid is missing.

The lifeguard at the pool: 'No one in the water until 30 minutes after the last strike. You wanna get electrocuted, go climb a tree'. A very specific line and another possible hint that someone ended up in the water (a lake) and that powers (the strike) saved them. Behind him a poster with the date '76 and the word Happy Birthday.

In 4x01, El says that they're all time travellers and that it feels like it's been ten years since she saw Mike. 1986-10 = 1976.

There's also this poster of the Salizburger Festpiele of 1976- Der Talisman. We see it as Murray and Joyce are talking about Russia and Murray is preparing his ice bath (he was the one who thought El was a russian spy). Once again, connection between cold and 1976. Plus, The Talisman. in 4x09 Lucas read Stephen King's novel, The Talisman, a story about parallel worlds and Twinners.

EDIT 2/3/24: Ross posted a photo of A Wrinkle in Time. The book was published in 1962, but this is the cover of the 1976 paperback edition (here) Interesting choice.

(*) About the quarry scene.There's also a parallel with Fringe, one of my favorite shows. Mike wears the same shirt Peter wears in episode 3x15, Subject 13 (my post about Number 13 and Polivia-Byler parallel)

In that episode, Peter almost drowns in the same frozen lake where Walter opened a portal to the other universe.

And it is revealed that Olivia can travel to the other universe when she's scared. The trigger? Her violent stepfather (looking at you, Lonnie) Why would he hurt the kids? Jealousy, money, or both. A possible parallel with Billy's father, who was jealous of his wife and in Billy's memory asks her: Did you see him again?

[v-i-r-i-d-i-a-n]

Will Byers and Jonathan deserve more screentime together THEY DESERVE TO TALK ABT THE SHIT THATS HAPPENING LET ME GET ANITHER BROTHER HUG LET ME GET WILL BREAKING DOWN AND JONATHAN COMFORTING HIM

ACTUALLY THROW EL INTO THE MIX TOO LET THEM BE SIBLINGS GODDAMNIT