‘Stranger Things’ Stars Noah Schnapp and Millie Bobby Brown on Will’s Sexuality: ‘It’s Up to the Audience’s Interpretation’
Adam B. Vary Senior Entertainment WriterSPOILER ALERT: This story discusses plot points of Season 4 of “Stranger Things,” currently streaming on Netflix.With 16 main characters, at least a dozen new characters, and five major locations — including a prison in Soviet-era Russia and a converted underground missile silo somewhere in the American West — it’s frankly surprising that Season 4 of “Stranger Things” has any time to explore quiet moments of personal growth.
But anyone tracking the journey of Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) over the course of the show has noticed that the kid who survived the Upside Down has struggled to reconnect with his old Dungeons and Dragons buddies for reasons that don’t seem to have much to do with being captured by a demogorgon from an alternate dimension.
Namely, Will seems like he’s gay and struggling to come out.That impression has only grown stronger in Season 4. In the first episode, Will and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) have to give a presentation in their new California high school on a hero they look up to; Will chooses Alan Turing, the gay mathematician who was prosecuted in the 1950s for his sexuality and forced to undergo chemical castration.
