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thetomorrowshow · 3 months ago

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Whumptober 31 - Asking For Help

title: for him it was not an important failure

fandom: limited life smp

cw: discussion of child/spouse abuse, murder

this is another part of my bad boys gang au, continuing days 6, 14, and 22!

“Hey, could I—”

“Jimmy!” Joel cheers, sliding Jimmy his half-drunk beer. “Have a drink! You’re old enough to drink, right?”

Jimmy rolls his eyes. “Right. That one never gets old.”

Grian snorts. “Just like you.”

“Dude, shut up!”

“Come on, sit down, sit down,” Joel waves. Jimmy takes a look around at the rest of the busy bar, then slides into their booth, folding his hands in front of him.

“I’ve got—”

Grian raises a hand, flags down a waiter who just happens to be passing by. “Yeah, could you get him something light? It’s his birthday, first time drinking—”

“Bro,” Jimmy growls, leveling his strongest glare at Grian. Joel almost chokes on his beer (which he had promptly taken back once Jimmy sat down).

“Oh, no, I think you made the kid mad,” Joel can’t help but rib. Jimmy turns his glare on Joel, which does nothing to intimidate him, but does make him laugh a little harder.

“I didn’t come here to get bullied,” huffs Jimmy. “I—I have a job, and I wanted to ask your help for it.”

A job? Why would Jimmy have a job?

Grian’s the one who usually brings back the jobs for their little team, as he’s technically in charge of them. Jimmy’s never just showed up with a job ready to go.

It’s unheard of. It’s weird.

Grian is just as confused as Joel, apparently, because he only frowns for a moment before holding out his hand.

“Yeah, right. Show me.”

Jimmy pulls a plain white envelope out of the inside pocket of his jean jacket, passes it over to Grian. “I asked for a job,” he says, and Joel can’t help but notice that his voice has taken on an oddly nervous tone, lowered to not be heard over the sounds of the bar. “They said I could pick a team. Will you?”

Grian opens the envelope, his eyes scanning the paper. After a moment, he passes it to Joel.

It looks like a run-of-the-mill intimidation job. Some guy who owes the Bad Boys a considerable amount of money, has already missed more than one payment. Joel doesn’t recognize the name, so it’s probably a local politician or some corrupt businessman.

“Why would they give you a job?” Grian asks.

“I—I asked for one. I want to—”

“You want to rise in the ranks, huh?” Grian says. “Leave your old pals behind for greener pastures?”

“No, I—”

“Joel?”

There’s something not quite right about this. Jimmy has never mentioned wanting to lead out a job before—why would he go out of his way to ask for one?

But a job is a job, Joel supposes. They get paid by the job, and he likes to get paid as much as possible. It looks pretty easy, in and out, get the money and give a warning.

“Sure,” he shrugs. “Sounds fun!”

“With Tim leading, it’ll be a trainwreck. . . .”

“Hey!”

“That’s half the point, see? I want to see the train explode in slow motion.”

Grian snorts. “And somebody has to drag your bodies out of the wreckage, I guess.”

Jimmy opens his mouth to argue further, but he’s cut off by several waiters approaching, a cocktail and a cupcake in hand. “We heard that someone here is a birthday boy?” one of them encourages, holding the cupcake out to the table.

Jimmy’s face goes redder than a tomato in one second flat. “Grian, I will kill you,” he moans.

“That’s him!” Joel points to Jimmy delightedly. “Old enough to drink as of ten-thirty this morning!”

The waiters break into a rousing chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’, despite Jimmy’s repeated mutterings of “I’m literally twenty-two!”

Joel just laughs and downs the rest of his beer.

The mark, a man named Ed Fowler, lives in a townhouse in a quiet part of the city, a moderately nice car in the assigned street parking spot and a recycling bin out on the curb. Joel pokes his head into it as they sneak past, under cover of the late night—empty. The guy must’ve forgot to drag it up yesterday.

Breaking into the house is easy, even with the security system advertised on the sign outside the main window. Ed had left his kitchen window cracked, and Joel boosts Grian up and through it, then crawls in himself, aided by Jimmy below. Once he’s crawled his way over the sink (full of dirty dishes, geez, can this man not clean up after himself?), he turns around and takes Jimmy’s hands, heaving him through.

Grian’s already going through the cupboards by the time Joel pulls Jimmy all the way through, eventually finding and withdrawing a box of Cheerios.

“No good cereal,” he grumbles.

“Do you even eat dinner before these kinds of jobs anymore?” Joel asks, leaning up against a counter—much of the counter space is taken up by a microwave and a couple of empty beer cans. There’s a tied-off, bulging trash bag near his feet, and judging by the sound it makes when Joel kicks it, it’s full of more beer cans.

Grian opens the fridge. “Nope. Oh, gross, his milk is expired. Maybe he’s got chicken nuggets.”

“I’m gonna check the living room,” Jimmy mumbles, and with barely a sound, he slips out of the kitchen.

Grian glances at Joel, and Joel finds a reflection of his own feelings in his face—confusion, concern, suspicion.

“Jimmy’s being weird,” Joel says. Grian nods.

“Super weird. Do you think it’s just . . . y’know, leading a job?”

Jimmy had been the one to scout out the house, had presented a plan. Sure, it had been the usual plan for how Grian ran these kinds of jobs, but being in charge is a lot of pressure. It probably didn’t help that Joel and Grian had both been teasing him all day about it.

“What time have you got?” Joel asks, instead of responding. Grian checks his watch.

“About two in the morning. Just jitters, you think?”

Jimmy doesn’t go quiet when he gets jittery, though. He over-talks, laughs too much, hollers out his nerves. He’s so loud when he’s got jitters.

But this is a new situation. Maybe this is just a new kind of Jimmy Jitters that they haven’t seen before.

“Yeah, probably,” says Joel, though it feels not-quite-right. “Does he have any chicken nuggets?”

“Chicken strips, actually. And a handful of frozen dinners—you wanna pop this in the microwave?”

Grian tosses him a freezer meal. Joel raises an eyebrow as he examines the package. “Really? Spaghetti and meatballs?”

“You underestimate my love for pasta.”

“Yeah, but the salisbury steak ones are way better.”

“He doesn’t have any of those, he has that one and some ham and potato ones. Clearly, I chose the best option offered.”

They aren’t trying to be quiet. They’re honestly being pretty loud, and Grian turned on the kitchen light before Joel even got in, so they’re about as inconspicuous as a pack of drunk teenagers trying to sneak in. Joel only adds to it when he rummages through the silverware drawer for a knife to cut slits in the top of the frozen dinner’s plastic film, then tosses it in the microwave with a slam of the door.

It isn’t a stealth mission.

It’s intimidation.

That’s all the noise it takes for Joel to hear creaking coming from the staircase, the door leading to it situated between the kitchen and the living room. He leans back against the counter, making sure he looks carefully unbothered. Grian keeps rummaging through the freezer, making occasional noises of disapproval.

“This salmon has got to be centuries old, it’s covered in ice,” Grian says. He chucks it in the nearby trash can, heavy enough that it drags the trashbag down with it into the can.

“Get out of my house.” Joel looks up. Grian doesn’t.

The man standing at the bottom of the staircase must be Ed Fowler, and he isn’t exactly what Joel expected. Judging by the food and beer cans, he’d expected a portly, greasy guy, the kind of guy who spent hours in front of the TV without eating a single vegetable.

Ed Fowler is fairly fit, his grey nightshirt showing some pectoral definition, his arms muscular. He’s a big guy, definitely taller than Joel, and his light-brown hair is speckled with grey, cropped short enough to almost be militant.

And maybe it is militant, given the steely look in his eyes and the gun in his hands.

“G! Three makes company!” Joel says, and Grian makes brief eye contact with him, his sight of Ed blocked by the freezer door.

Three makes company—their code for whether or not someone has a gun. They haven’t used that one in a while, not since Jimmy joined them. Now they usually say something like our friend is here, but for some reason Joel had jumped to the old one.

Ed doesn’t move, his gun trained on Joel.

“Ed Fowler,” Joel says. The microwave beeps beside him. He ignores it, though Ed’s eyes flick toward it. “How long has it been since you washed dishes?”

Ed’s chuckle is humorless. “Too long. What do you boys want?”

Grian grimaces. “Look, I know Joel’s not that tall, but we’re fully adult men,” he says, closing the freezer. He still doesn’t look at Ed, instead walking back toward the silverware drawer, holding a frosted-over carton of ice cream. “Got any clean spoons?”

“Right. I suppose I should say Bad Boys,” Ed says. “Why are you here?”

Grian shrugs nonchalantly. “Oh, you know. We get a job, we do it. I think the question is for you, Ed—why would the Bad Boys be at your house at two in the morning?”

Ed looks genuinely confused, though he hides it well with a small smirk. “I’m guessing it isn’t a booty call,” he jokes, and Joel almost laughs.

This guy is pretty cool, actually. The kind of guy that Joel would grab a drink with, probably. Well, maybe. Depends on his profession—his build kind of looks like a cop, and that’s a red flag from the get-go.

Where’s Jimmy? He was only going to check the living room, it can’t have taken too much time.

Last time Jimmy went missing during a house visit like this, it wasn’t pretty.

The microwave beeps again. Another minute that he hasn’t appeared.

“You’ve missed some payments,” Grian says, his tone still casual. He manages to find a spoon, but the ice cream is so frozen solid that it won’t even dig in. He chips away at it, finally turns to face Ed. “The boss sent us to collect.”

“I haven’t owed the Bad Boys anything in years.”

Joel shrugs. “Not according to our records. Nothing we can do about it, so you might as well fork something over.” Now that Grian has eyes on Ed, he turns to the microwave, popping it open. The freezer meal looks more unappetizing than it did earlier, but he pulls it out anyway.

“That’s stupid,” Ed spits. “I don’t have any debts!”

“Yes, you do.”

Joel looks up.

There’s a gun just in sight, pointed straight at Ed’s temple, and Jimmy takes a step into the light, eyes trained on Ed.

Ed’s eyes glance to the side. His face turns red quicker than Joel’s ever seen, cheeks suddenly ruddy with anger.

“James,” he says, and despite the clear rage in his face, his voice is calm. “Put the gun down.”

James? Does this man know Jimmy?

If he does, then Jimmy never should have accepted this job. It’s an unspoken rule in the Bad Boys that you don’t do jobs that involve people from your personal life, and Jimmy knows that well enough.

Jimmy doesn’t move. His hand is steady. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I think this is when you put the gun down.”

Ed’s fingers tighten around the grip of his gun. “What, and leave myself defenseless?”

Jimmy laughs—short, sharp, ugly. “Yep. Drop it. Kick it over to Grian.”

Joel glances at Grian—he’s gone still, the ice cream forgotten on the counter. He’s staring, staring at Jimmy, worry creasing his brow.

This isn’t right. Something about this isn’t right at all—maybe it’s the cold tone of Jimmy’s voice, usually so lively; maybe it’s the whitening of his knuckles around the grip of his gun.

After a long, long moment, Ed slowly drops into a crouch, carefully setting his gun on the ground. He pushes it to Grian, the gun skittering across the tile floor of the kitchen. Grian catches it under his foot, but makes no move to pick it up.

When Ed straightens, he keeps his hands up and open, so that everyone can see that there’s nothing. “All right,” he says, voice once again even. “How much do I owe?”

“Twenty-thousand,” Joel says quickly. “That’s the first payment. Seventy-thousand, total.”

“Right. Well, I want it made clear that I don’t owe anything, but I’ll cut a check for fifteen-thousand now if you can arrange a meeting with one of your bosses. I want to get this cleared up.”

That sounds good to Joel, honestly—this situation isn’t right at all with the way Jimmy’s acting, he suddenly wants to get out of here—so he casts a look toward Grian, waiting for him to accept the deal.

Grian doesn’t say a word. He looks toward Jimmy.

Oh, no.

Jimmy’s leading this mission.

Can’t Grian take over? Doesn’t he see that Jimmy is clearly acting on some personal grudge and thereby compromised?

Jimmy doesn’t look at either of them. “I don’t think that’ll cut it,” he says, and Joel’s heart sinks. That isn’t the right choice to make; he’s letting his emotions get in the way of this job. He should accept it and let them get out. “I think you know that.”

Ed growls. “Look, I can get the money. I just want to talk to your boss.”

“I don’t want the money, though,” Jimmy says softly. “I know you don’t owe anything.”

“James—”

“Jimmy—” Grian says, reaching forward—

“I want you to talk to me like a grown man,” Ed says. “Can you behave long enough to do that?”

“I’m going to kill you,” Jimmy says, as if he didn’t hear either of them speak, voice still so eerily soft. “You see?”

Ed’s adam’s apple bobs. “If you do it like that, you’re nothing but a coward. Sit down and talk.”

“I’ll do it as a coward. I don’t care how disappointed you are in me. Not anymore.”

Joel swallows. They need to get Jimmy out of here before he does something he regrets—yeah, all of them have killed before, but not like this. Not as whatever—whatever revenge this is.

“Grian,” he whispers. “Tell him to stand down.”

Grian doesn’t say anything.

“James,” Ed says, and now his voice trembles, cracks in his cool facade beginning to spiderweb out. His eyes dart back and forth between Grian in front of him and Jimmy to his left, his mouth a thin line. “James, put the gun down and let’s talk about it. I’m not ready to die today.”

That’s the wrong thing to say.

Joel sees it in Jimmy’s face, the way his features darken, the way his eyes harden. “Was she ready to die?” he asks.

“I—”

“Was she ready to die? The doctor said the hemorrhage was caused by recent head trauma.” Jimmy digs the gun into Ed’s forehead; the man blanches. “Which concussion do you think caused it? How many times did you slam her head against the wall over the years?”

“I didn’t kill—”

“Was I ready to die?” Jimmy asks, and his voice is shaking now, as well. “How old was I, fifteen? A kid that you left bleeding out on your bedroom floor. Do you know that I thought of her? I was dying, and all I wondered was if she felt the same way. Alone. Terrified. Sick.”

“Yet you survived,” Ed spits. “James, I didn’t kill your mother.”

“Keep telling yourself that. It won’t save you, in the end.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

When Jimmy was only eighteen, Joel had become fairly certain that Jimmy was experiencing some level of abuse at home. He and Grian had started slipping extra bonuses into Jimmy’s money (he remembers how excited the kid had been, showing them that he was getting paid more than he expected), and when Jimmy had announced to them that he was going to be able to afford an apartment, they celebrated with him. They bought him a tiny cactus as a housewarming gift and never mentioned their involvement in his pay raise.

After he got the apartment, Jimmy finally started to mellow out. He started laughing more, blaming himself less for mistakes, getting control of the anger that burned within him.

He had stopped showing up after every weekend with new bruises.

If Joel’s right, this man is his father.

Now that he’s made that connection, he can see the resemblance. Jimmy’s hair is just a couple shades lighter than Ed’s, his nose the same sharp angle. Ed’s eyes are the exact same hazel as Jimmy’s, and if there were a few more lights on, Joel expects he would find the same light freckles on Ed’s cheeks that Jimmy has.

He—he thought this man was cool mere moments ago. He almost laughed at his joke.

This is a man who abused Jimmy, and—apparently—almost killed him.

Joel feels sick, and it isn’t from the the smell of the microwave dinner.

“You don’t want to kill me,” Ed says. It might be a threat, it might be a beg. Jimmy laughs again, still that horrible, ugly laugh that’s so unlike Jimmy.

“I’ve wanted to kill you since I was fourteen,” he says. “Lizzie’s the only thing that kept me from shooting you in your sleep.”

Ed latches onto that. “Elizabeth wouldn’t want you to—”

“Lizzie isn’t here right now. She’s sound asleep in the apartment that I saved up for for years to get us out. I got her away from you. I saved her.”

“I’m not the monster that you think I am, James.”

“What, so you’re normal?” Jimmy scoffs. His words come faster and faster, emotion driving each syllable. “Normal people don’t choke nine year old boys until they pass out. Normal people don’t—don’t put their cigarettes out on their kids’ backs. Normal people don’t hurt their kids, dad!”

“I—and what does that make you, now?” says Ed. “A gangster? How is that any better?”

“Anything’s better than a wife-beating cop,” Jimmy snarls, and for a moment, his hand shakes. The gun slips from Ed’s forehead briefly, scrapes down the side of his face, and Ed freezes.

“James—”

Jimmy reasserts his hold on the gun, one thumb running over the grip. “This is your gun,” he says, his voice soft again. It’s scary, how quickly he can go from one to the other. “E.J.F., your initials. You gave it to me. Remember?”

“James—” Ed says again, but Jimmy cuts him off.

“I want to make it hurt. I want to watch you bleed out. But I’m better than you.”

Silence.

A bit of ice drips off the ice cream carton.

Joel hardly dares to breathe.

“Please don’t kill me,” Ed whispers, the blood entirely drained from his face, leaving it pale as milk. “I don’t want to die.”

Jimmy’s face doesn’t change. “Neither did my mom.”

BANG.

For Jimmy, the job was surprisingly well-executed.

As it turned out, he had gone to TIES.

He had approached Etho of TIES six months earlier, presenting him with a fat file folder of evidence of Ed Fowler’s corruption. Ed Fowler, a high-ranking police officer, was known to take bribes from certain less-reputable gangs while borrowing money from those less likely to kill him, including TIES. In fact, he had borrowed sufficiently from TIES that Etho felt justified in sending someone to collect. He gave Jimmy the details and Jimmy forged the handwriting of a higher-up in the Bad Boys to write out the job. While in the living room of the townhouse that Joel now knew to be Jimmy’s childhood home, he had disabled any security systems or cameras that might incriminate them.

With Etho’s permission, as Jimmy claimed, they ransacked the place and made it look like TIES had destroyed it looking for money. Of course, they took any money and valuables they could find. Joel found a couple of very nice guns in the master bedroom—he wasn’t just going to let them go to waste.

(He looked at the floor, at the stained brown carpet, and shuddered.)

By the time they leave, it’s almost four. Nobody speaks, but that morning, for the first time, Jimmy pulls up GPS navigation to an apartment address on the other side of the city.

They walk into Jimmy’s apartment at around five in the morning, the pink-haired woman living there already awake. She and Jimmy make long eye contact, in which Jimmy kind of shrugs and blushes, and she frowns.

Then she smiles, and invites them all in, and introduces herself as Lizzie Fowler.

Joel pays more attention to Jimmy than he does to her, keeping an eye on his emotions, but Jimmy seems fine. A bit shaken (he’s barely spoken since he did it, face pale and blood spattered across his knuckles), but fine.

Lizzie and Jimmy go about preparing something to eat—and Grian raids their cereal, humming in satisfaction as he finds something sugary—and Joel just stands awkwardly in the center of the kitchen, not sure what to do.

Soon enough, the eggs and toast are done, and everyone retires to the living room.

“Thanks for the help,” Jimmy mumbles, once they all have some sort of breakfast item in hand, and Jimmy’s sitting between Grian and Joel on the cheap sofa, his head leaning on Grian’s shoulder. Lizzie’s on the floor in front of him, her back against the sofa, idly picking at Jimmy’s pant leg.

“I don’t think we did anything, Tim,” Grian tells him, idly running a hand through Jimmy’s hair. “Like, that was all you.”

“Not that.”

Jimmy’s at the most relaxed Joel’s ever seen him, his eyelids fluttering, his shoulders slumped. He yawns, leans further against Grian.

Joel wraps an arm around him, leans in as well.

Grian smiles at Joel when he catches his eye. Joel smiles back.

They can reprimand Jimmy later. They can tell him how foolish he was for getting other gangs involved in personal revenge, how terribly that situation could have ended. He’ll probably be getting suspended from jobs for a while, restricted to manning the front or janitorial duties.

That can wait, though.

The sparse living room grows lighter and lighter as the sun breaks over the horizon, gradually bathing them all in its warm yellow glow.

It’s a new beginning that isn’t for him. It’s for Jimmy and Lizzie, almost uncomfortable in their silence, but not quite leaving each other’s side. It’s for Jimmy, a release of the weight that he’s been carrying for years. It’s for Jimmy, able to seek out comfort at last.

Joel just has the privilege of witnessing it.

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pinkeoni · 2 years ago

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Figuring Out Lonnie’s Whole Deal

(Or, assembling a timeline of pre-show events inspired by a culmination of theories centering around one Lonnie Byers)

After spending much time deliberating and theorizing, I’ve come to what I believe is a solid timeline of events relating to Lonnie Byers grounded in evidence from the show.

Now I don’t have all of the pieces, but also if I had all of the pieces then I wouldn’t need to be theorizing in the first place. Still, I’m fairly confident in my assessment. Maybe it would be wise of me to wait for The First Shadow to come out to give me more information, but for all intents and purposes of this I will only be looking at evidence within the text of the show. So no cast or crew comments, no supplemental materials, and as much as I love it, no speculation regarding TFS. Still, I think the show has enough evidence to support my assertion.

Things to establish:

A lot of what I’m about to talk about comes from a basis of these three things—

1. Will and El’s storylines mirror each other, which I charted out here. Their stories share a lot of differences, and a lot of similarities.

2. Powers are being used in this show to explore themes of sexuality through a sci-fi/supernatural lens. I talk about this in length here, but tl;dr El’s powers are used to explore the exploitation and reclamation of female sexuality, and Will’s powers are being used to show the demonization and repression of homosexuality.

3. Oh yeah, and Will has powers, by the way.

Surface Level Information We Are Given About Lonnie Byers:

It might be best to have a refresher of what we know about Lonnie Byers. Most of this comes from season one and all of it is displayed directly to the audience—

Lonnie is the absentee father of Jonathan and Will and ex-husband of Joyce

He left his family at an unspecified date that led Jonathan and Will to build Castle Byers the night of

He currently lives in Indianapolis

He used to call Will homophobic slurs

Joyce once argued with him about not showing up to a visitation with Will

Jonathan and Joyce do not speak of him fondly. Will’s feelings are unclear but seem positive “It’s fun to go with him sometimes”

Expressed interest in wanting to see Jonathan more

Referred to Joyce as “babe” despite being apart and having another girlfriend

Did not take Joyce’s calls to his house

Doubted Joyce, took down her Christmas lights and tried to repair the hole in the wall

Has unspecified debts

Likes to fix cars

Doesn’t like cops

Tried to use his “dead” son for lawsuit money

Was kicked out by Joyce and hasn’t been seen on screen since

Things to glean from just below the surface:

The following are things that are not stated directly, but can be easily inferred from clues given in show—

Lonnie is likely an alcoholic, shown through an abundance of beer bottles littering his house. Even if he splits it between him and his tiny girlfriend, it’s still an absurd amount of beer for two people. It’s possible he may have other addictions as well.

Lonnie was likely physically abusive towards Jonathan given his “You’ve gotten stronger” comment in the house. It’s possible that the extent of his abuse could stretch far beyond that for both Jon and Will.

Will likely used to hide from his dad. Jonathan and Will built Castle Byers the night he left, which Jonathan remarks that Will likes to hide in. Not to mention the “he’s good at hiding” comment.

The rest of this post is going to be much more speculative, but it’s all speculation that is grounded in what we see on and just below the surface.

Theory #1) Lonnie was involved with MK-ULTRA

This was an idea that I tossed around a while ago, that after spending time with and finding new evidence I’ve now grown more confident in.

Most of this confidence comes from this conversation between Becky and Jopper. Becky tells Hop that him and Terry would have gotten along, as Terry didn’t like authority or the government— “The Man , with a big capital M.” (which is ironic given Hopper is a cop)

When discussing who was involved with MK-ULTRA, Becky mentions “people like [Terry]”

So people like Terry, who maybe don’t like authority as was just mentioned?

It seems as though the Byers have always been down on their luck in terms of finance. Would it be hard to believe that, especially given the close proximity of the lab to the Byers house and Lonnie's willingness to get money in the show, Lonnie might have partaken in a paid study in the past? ("You were in it for the money!")

Above I mentioned the implication that Lonnie is an alcoholic. If he was involved with a study involving hard drugs, could he have developed addiction problems through the program? Furthermore, wouldn't it also make sense for Lonnie to gain a mistrust of authority after being taken advantage of by the government?

In my initial post about it I discuss how this could be foreshadowed through Hopper’s past as well. Hopper was involved with something government related that required chemicals, something that ended up affecting his child.

Theory #2) Lonnie was working with the lab during season one

Another part of proving Lonnie’s MK-ULTRA involvement is his connection with the lab. Everything that I’m about to list could align perfectly with Lonnie simply just being a shitty ex and father, but everything that I’m about to list could also align perfectly with the idea that Lonnie was working with the lab against Joyce the entire season.

1) Lonnie’s fishiness with Joyce’s phone call

I’ve already made an entire post about this here but I’ll recap all of the important bits.

Right before we see Joyce call Lonnie in the first episode, we are shown the lab spying on her conversation explicitly. Joyce is then sent to voicemail, which given the ordering of scenes makes me wonder if the lab purposefully intercepted her call.

Joyce also never actually talks to Lonnie on the phone. Cynthia picks up until their call is disconnected, which could have been Cynthia but also could have been the lab interfering again.

When Jonathan confronts Lonnie about not returning Joyce’s call, he kind of shrugs off his answer.

Why the hesitancy at first, Lonnie?

Lonnie tells Jonathan that he’s talked to police, which is likely, but then adds a comment that makes me question if he talked to any Hawkins cops at all.

Why do you need to ask if Hopper is chief, if Hawkins police came to question you, Lonnie?

2) The timing of Lonnie showing up in Hawkins

Even after being told this his own son is missing, Lonnie does not show up in town until after—

Will’s “body” is found in the quarry

Joyce refuses to sign off on the fake body

Joyce actually speaks to and is able to see Will through the hole in the wall

The next time we see Joyce is when Lonnie pulls up that night at the Byers house. Here is what Lonnie does while he’s there:

Tells Joyce that Will is in her head

Tell Jonathan not to feed into Joyce’s “delusions”

Takes down the Xmas lights that Joyce was using to talk to Will

Covers the hole in the wall that Joyce saw Will through

Unsuccessfully tries to convince Joyce to use Will’s "death" for money

All of these actions align perfectly with Lonnie’s character, do you also see how it also aligns perfectly with Lonnie trying to purposefully cover up the truth?

We don’t see Joyce call Lonnie to come over and I highly doubt that Jonathan asked him to come. Granted, Lonnie was most likely notified by police of Will’s death, why not come right away? Why wait until after Joyce refuses to believe that it’s Will’s body and after she actually sees Will alive in her walls?

Remember that the lab had likely bugged her house as well, given the scene where Hop finds a bug in his cabin.

Think about the timing of when the lab decided to place Will’s body in the quarry and have it found, something that we know for a fact was their doing. This comes after Joyce had discovered the ability to talk to Will through the lights and right after the writing on the wall scene, when Joyce was coming closer to the truth.

If a lab personnel showed up at the Byers, took down the lights and hammered over the wall, that would obviously draw a lot of suspicion towards them. But if the lab could get someone on the inside to do it, perhaps an ex-spouse that can be easily manipulated with cash and already had connections to them, that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.

That’s also where the lawsuit comes in. If the lab is paying off Lonnie and his family, they can’t just give them the a ton of cash directly, it would likely have to go through a third party under the guise of something else, like a legal suit. I’m willing to bet all my money that the suit Lonnie wanted to file on the Sattlers was just another cover from the lab.

Theory #3) Lonnie was trying to hand Will over to the lab

Another note about Terry, if Will and El are mirrors then Lonnie and Terry may possibly be mirrors, too. If Terry was desperate to get El out of the lab then maybe Lonnie was desperate to get Will into the lab. Also the difference between Terry's daughter being taken from her/Lonnie voluntarily leaving his own son.

Something we know about Lonnie Byers— he was homophobic towards Will and did not want to visit him after he had left.

Something else we know about Lonnie Byers— he likes to fix cars.

We have confirmation that Lonnie was trying to “fix” Will, at least in a less aggressive manner, by taking him to baseball games. Jonathan says explicitly, “He’s trying to force you to like normal things.” This line is so incredibly loaded, what Jonathan is saying below the surface is "He's trying to force you to like girls."

The above scene is in the same episode where Jonathan goes to Lonnie’s Indianapolis house, and we get a line from Lonnie about him fixing up a car.

Yes, Will is being compared to a car. Lonnie wants to fix him.

And remember, Will has powers, and powers are being used as a way to explore sexuality.

So given Lonnie’s connection with the lab from MK-ULTRA as expressed before, along with Lonnie’s hatred of Will and homophobia, along along with powers as a metaphor for Will's queerness, it leads me to believe that Lonnie was trying to cure Will of his powers through the lab. This would essentially be the supernatural version of gay conversion therapy.

I want to talk about the word “mistake”

This word is so potent and really sticks out because we haven’t really seen it used in this way on the show before. The writers could have had Will say “monster” to relate to El's arc, or they could have had him say “freak” which would not only relate to Eddie but is something that Will has called himself in the past. But instead they decide to give him a new word that is different from the labels other characters give themselves.

The word mistake is unique to Will.

What do you do with mistakes? You fix them.

I have a lot of fun with Will-being-a-lab-kid theories, and nothing but absolute love to those who make them, but after doing a lot of my own thinking I’ve since come to the conclusion that Will didn’t grow up in the lab at all, but Lonnie was making an unsuccessful effort to ship Will to the lab. Part of El and Will’s narrative mirroring is Will coming from a normal background while El does not.

Which isn’t to say that the lab didn’t want Will, I think they very much did. I’ve seen the take that Lonnie tried to hand Will to the lab but he didn’t display powers at the time so they wouldn’t take him. But do you really think that that would stop them from wanting him anyway, especially if the boys father was giving him to them willingly? Do you really think that Martin “you wouldn’t stop” Brenner was gonna turn down another child? That someone was willing to give to him?

So then, if Lonnie was willing to give Will to the lab and the lab was willing to take him, what was stopping them?

For starters, I’m guessing that the process involved in receiving a new test subject, especially one that wasn’t born into the lab, would take patience. They can’t just nab Will off the street. They would probably have to surveil things for a while, gain intel from Lonnie, and come up with a strategy.

A strategy that may involve falsifying an accident, a fake body, and the funneling of money via fake lawsuit?

I’m not saying that the lab was the ones behind Will’s disappearance, at least initially. I think the mothergate opening was completely unpredictable from their end and instead necessitated the plan to be accelerated due to sudden unforeseen circumstances, as well as taking advantage of Will’s presence in the Upside Down to try and take him for themselves.

So why wait until now? If they had an airtight plan, why not act sooner?

Could there have been an incident, perhaps, with the lab, which happened prior to Will’s disappearance, that may have delayed this process?

I’m willing to bet that a mass death event of majority of the test subjects and personnel from the place that Lonnie was trying to send Will to, might be enough to put the brakes on this operation, if not on delay for a few years so they can regroup.

While we’re here, I wanna talk about Will’s similarities to Henry Creel

The comparisons between Henry and Will aren’t something hidden under the layers for only die hard theorists to find, this is something that everyone and their mothers were discussing on twitter. The similarities were noticeable even from casual viewing.

Image via Reddit

We know from his monologue that Henry’s mother knew he had powers and wanted to send him away to a doctor, a doctor that we later learn was actual Papa Brenner.

If Will and Henry are similar, is it possible that their parents wanted similar things? The main difference being that Will actually did evade Dr. Brenner.

Furthermore, is it possible that Will has powers similar to One’s and that the lab could have been knowledgeable of this? If that is the case, it may stand to reason that they might be hesitant to bring in someone with similar abilities to the guy who just killed a bunch of people.

I used to think that Will and Henry had to have completely different sets of powers, and while I do think that Will may have abilities unique to himself, given how they are compared I do think that Will may have similar powers to him. In fact, we may have already seen Will display a traveling into the mind ability in season one.

Theory #3.5) Lonnie’s departure correlates with the Hawkins Lab massacre

If Lonnie was desperate to get rid of the son he hates, and then was told that there was an unexpected delay, it would make sense for him to give up and leave town.

There’s been comments from cast and crew in the past regarding when exactly Lonnie left, but it’s never been confirmed in show.

Evidence for why I think it coincides with the massacre actually comes from the shed scene.

Joyce first mentions Will’s eighth birthday, which would have been in March of 1979. The massacre was in September of 1979.

Mentioning his eighth birthday specifically places emphasis on that age. Jonathan then follows Joyce by talking about the night dad left.

We don’t get an exact timeframe or age, but the fact that this follows the story if Will’s eighth birthday does create a correlation with that age. We then switch timeframes when Mike brings up kindergarten.

Think about it, if their dad had left when Will was eight, bringing up his age again would be redundant because Joyce just mentioned it. Mike mentions kindergarten to let us know that this is a different time and age that we’re talking about.

Let’s talk about Lonnie’s debts

What exactly these debts are that Joyce brings up is never specified. And it could be anything. Maybe a loan he took out, drug or gambling debts, since nothing is stated it’s all possible. But here’s my take:

Will is Lonnie’s debt. That’s what he owes.

Remember that the exact way that Lonnie was going to pay back these debts was with Will. He is linked with this debt conversation.

It is Joyce who brings up the debt, but since she doesn’t specify there’s a reasonable doubt that she herself doesn’t know the specifics. She could know that Lonnie is indebted to someone but not know what/could have been lied to.

I’m imagining the lab giving Lonnie some kind of advanced payment for Will, with the promise that they’ll eventually have him. It would be a way for the lab to control Lonnie. He now owes them, and the lab expects to collect their debts. Despite the lab and Lonnie having similar goals, there is definitely a power imbalance.

Lonnie does want a family, just not one with Will in it

More thorough post here, but in season one we get indications in Lonnie's dialogue that he does want to be around his family, like expressing interest in seeing Jonathan more and calling Joyce "babe," which seems to contradict him living in another town, or hell even leaving his family at all.

When Joyce gets mad with Lonnie over the phone about not coming to visit, it was specifically a Will visitation day. It's seeming more and more that Lonnie's departure is centered on Will. (Which doesn't take away from any of the potential abuse he hurled at Jonathan or Joyce. He doesn't care about their interests, only his. Furthermore, I'm not placing blame onto Will for Lonnie's absence. That is all Lonnie's doing)

Am I saying that Lonnie has powers?

Well, maybe.

That is something that I’ve been wondering if Lonnie had powers, which granted is something that relied heavily on speculation regarding TFS which I said I wanted to stay away from for this post. Since I don’t have all the pieces yet, I want to consider as many options as possible.

Option A) Lonnie was born with powers, and MK-ULTRA was simply how he became acquainted with the lab/his powers were repressed and MK-ULTRA activated them

Option B) Lonnie received powers from MK-ULTRA and passed it on to Will

Option C) Lonnie was not born with powers nor received powers from MK-ULTRA but it did give him super-powered sperm

May I remind you of Lonnie's comparison to Terry from earlier in the post, and the fact that Terry herself does have powers.

I oftentimes see the theory that Joyce herself has powers, and I myself even theorized that her Aunt Darlene may have had powers. However I'm more inclined to believe that Joyce is a carrier of this gene rather than having powers herself. Most of the evidence used to suggest that she has powers comes from Joyce reacting to what Will is showing her. There's also no indication that Jonathan has any powers.

If Lonnie participated in MK-ULTRA after Jonathan was born, then it could explain why Will would have powers and not Jonathan. Moreover, having both a mother who is a carrier and a father with powers/nuked balls would likely have a higher chance of having a powered child. (That's how genetics work, right? Please forgive me if my science is wrong.)

Notes on Lonnie's character

You'll note that there are multiple times in this post where I acknowledge that I lot of Lonnie's actions are explainable because of his identity as a shitty guy, and maybe that's all this is. However, I want to explain why having this type of character is actually perfect for a reveal like this.

In order to pull off a successful reveal, you have to hide the truth while also giving enough information so it doesn't come out of nowhere. Lonnie's personality allows for the truth to be hidden in plain sight.

Let's say that Lonnie was actually an upstanding man. Jonathan and Joyce both had fond memories of him, but he left in the past for some unknown reason. Lonnie was always a great husband, but for some reason he's doubting Joyce and taking down her Christmas lights even when she asks him not to.

Do you see how that would create a huge plot hole? How season one would feel incomplete? How it would create a giant unanswered question that needs answering?

Why didn't Joyce know about any of this?

Unfortunately we are told pretty explicitly in season one as to why something like this could have been happening under Joyce's nose. We are told in the first episode that Joyce works long hours, leaving early in the morning and not coming home until later in the night. Jonathan is expected to get Will up, make breakfast, and take him to school. My guess is that Lonnie may have been in charge of such tasks when he was still home.

If Lonnie was, say, taking Will to the lab for some preliminary tests or meetings, he could have easily done this while Joyce was at work or while Jonathan was in school.

We even hear from Joyce herself that she hasn't been keeping up with Jonathan, she isn't in the know how with her sons. (This is not me calling Joyce a bad mother btw, this is definitely a symptom of capitalism rather than bad parenting.)

Why doesn't Will say anything?

If Will was being taken to the lab for appointments in the past, wouldn't he say something about it? Especially to El, who grew up in the lab?

Well, there's a chance that Will doesn't remember this.

Longer post here, but we are given a scene in season four where Will expresses not remembering something from his childhood very well.

Which I could write off as Will being too little to remember this small detail, but this is also coming from the same season where we just got an entire plot line about memories from El's past being erased. (El who, as I stated in the beginning, has a storyline that mirrors Will's)

The Final Timeline

Tl;dr, or, the timeline written out chronologically:

Lonnie marries Joyce and has Jonathan. Jonathan is born without powers

Lonnie becomes involved with MK-ULTRA sometime prior to Will's birth as a way to make money

Joyce and Lonnie have Will, who was born with powers

When Will is very young Lonnie knows that he has powers

Lonnie begins taking Will to the lab in hopes of curing him

Lonnie and the lab strike a deal that involve taking Will in exchange for money

There is a plan to take Will involving a fake accident. Lonnie will file a fake lawsuit in order to exchange the money and avoid suspicion

The Hawkins Lab massacre happens and the plan is delayed

Lonnie leaves

Mothergate is opened by El and Will is taken

Upon realizing that Will is in the Upside Down, the plan moves forward with Lonnie in on it

Things don't go as expected and Joyce is on to Will being alive, so the lab asks Lonnie to come home in order to help with coverup

Joyce is infuriated about the lawsuit and kicks Lonnie out

The rest of the season follows as we see on screen and the labs plan unravels, some of the personnel is killed by El and the demogorgon in the school

#lonnie byers #will byers #will byers has powers #tw child abuse #stranger things #stranger things theory #my theory #woof this is another big one #maybe giant posts like these will become my thing #okay the plan is post now but schedule a reblog for the morning to ensure traffic #maybe someday i'll talk about how owens is continuing the surveillance of will #byler #<- target audience

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