#whereas byler would be an amazing end to mike and will's character arcs

[cringengl]

The two van scenes- Steve's self centered 'love' versus Will's selfless love.

The thing that I've only realised upon rewatch is the similarities between Steve's love confession to Nancy in 4x08 and Will's love confession to Mike, also in 4x08 (aka the van scene). Although we usually use parallels to show how similar the ships are, suggesting that they may have similar fates (such as jancy & byler parallels and mleven & stncy parallels), I think these two scenes are similar to show how different stncy and byler are.

So what are the similarities???

First off we have the fact that they take place in the same episode (roughly 25 mins apart) and exsist in a van. There's other similarities such as they both have a "Yeah?" "Yeah." scene:

Which really draws the parallels. Furthermore, both Mike and Nancy feel like they're losing El and Jonathan.

Although Mike confirms these fears more explicitly than Nancy, it's clear that her and Jonathan are drifting apart when neither of them go to visit eachother over spring break, which clearly upsets Nancy. Jonathan's college plans only confirm for the audience that they are drifting apart.

Finally, both Steve and Will give a 'gift' of sorts: Will's painting, and Steve's vision of his future (that he implies he wants Nancy to be a part of).

Will's love for Mike is selfless and generous.

The whole point of the van scene is that Will sacrifices and disregards his happiness as he believes that Mike would be happier with someone else- El, and so he uses his love confession to strengthen their (mleven's) relationship.

Steve literally does the opposite of this.

Steve's love confession is all about him. What he wants. He wants 6 little nuggets and a massive camper van for holidays and that's great for him, but it's not what Nancy wants. Steve is not considering what Nancy wants. It has been shown multiple times throughout the show that Nancy is ambitious and wants a career in journalism. It's what drives her to the trailer park where she learns about Victor Creel and it's why she wants to go to Emerson. I'm not saying that you can't be ambitious and have children, but children is clearly not a priority for Nancy. She literally says it right here:

Showing the difference in Steve and Will's love for their respective Wheeler. Whilst Steve is enforcing unwanted expectation onto Nancy, Will is doing the opposite- "ripping off the bandaid".

Even when Will envisions a future with Mike and tells him, it involves things that they have bonded over and enjoyed in the past together:

Will also gets Mike to talk to him, and share his insecurities. They have several other heart to hearts throughout the season where both Mike and Will talk honestly with eachother, whether that's about Mike's issues with El, being different and how scary it can be to tell other people and working together against Vecna.

Stncy at best has Steve talking about how he is crawling forward and working to be a better person, but not only is that in an effort to somewhat win Nancy back, Nancy never divulges her insecurities with Steve, their 'heart to heart' isn't mutal.

If we go back to the "Yeah?" "Yeah." parallel, you can see that's it's less of a parallel than you may originally think. The person who's asking "Yeah?" Is reversed in these situations, with stncy, it's the 'confessor', Steve, trying to see if Nancy agrees with him, but with byler, Will is instead the "Yeah.", and is helping Mike overcome his insecurities with El, and reaffirming Mike's new found confidence through Will's painting. Steve is again revolving the conversation around himself, where as Will is being as selfless as you can get.

Although it can be argued that maybe stncy isn't having as many heart to hearts and that the reason Nancy isn't responding similarly to Steve being vulnerable just yet is because they're exes, it's awkward, and Nancy is dating Jonathan.

But at the start of season 4, we see that byler are also in a rocky position in terms of their relarionship and Mike is literally dating El.

And yet, time and time again, we as the audience are shown how strong their relationship is and how much they care about repairing it, whereas stncy has had no such thing.

So what is the point of paralleling these van/confession scenes in the first place??

Personally, I think it's to show how pure and selfless Will's love for Mike is compared to Steve's, and what it's like for a confession to fall flat.

The byler van scene is full of beautiful cinematography, rising music, gorgeous lighting and powerful emotion, whereas in the stncy van scene, you can still here the rumbling of the van and the song 'Fire And Rain' by James Taylor, which presumably is from the radio, in the background whilst Nancy hesitantly agrees with what Steve is saying, making it feel less important and almost anti climatic.

Therefore, despite the initial, surface level similarities, these scenes show how vastly different byler and stncy are. Stncy will never be endgame because Steve's love is presented as self centered, whereas Will's love is beautiful and selfless. Byler is endgame as both Will's confession and Mike's reaction are telling of how strong their connection is and how deeply they love each other.