Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for “Stranger Things” season 4.
Noah Schnapp discussed his “Stranger Things” character Will Byers’s sexuality in a candid interview with Variety.
Since the first season of the hit show, bosses have hinted that Schnapp was in love with his best friend, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard).
Schnapp previously told Variety that his character’s sexuality was “up to the audience’s interpretation.” However, he’s now told the publication of whether he considered Will’s sexuality to be a spoiler so didn’t say anything: “Yeah, I think it is. Obviously, it was hinted at in season 1: It was always kind of there, but you never really knew, is it just him growing up slower than his friends? Now that he’s gotten older, they made it a very real, obvious thing.”
“Stranger Things” star Noah Schnapp on Will’s sexuality: “Now it’s 100% clear that he is gay and he does love Mike.”https://t.co/1Yz0M8CJal pic.twitter.com/zASxPcYjBT
— Variety (@Variety) July 15, 2022
Noah on Season 5: “Obviously, we hope for a coming out scene, and I also want to see them address this connection to the Mind Flayer and how that fits into the world…I just want to see it all tie in and all work out. So I’m excited to see what happens.”https://t.co/1Yz0M8CJal pic.twitter.com/Fc4prOhFsr
— Variety (@Variety) July 15, 2022
Schnapp continued, “Now it’s 100 per cent clear that he is gay and he does love Mike. But before, it was a slow arc. I think it is done so beautifully, because it’s so easy to make a character just like all of a sudden be gay. People have come up to me — I was just in Paris and this, like, 40-year-old man came up to me and he was like, ‘Wow, this Will character made me feel so good. And I related to it so much. That is exactly who I was when I was a kid.’
“That just made me so happy to hear. They are writing this real character and this real journey and real struggle and they’re doing it so well.”
Schnapp said of how it’s been for him to be asked about this over the years despite only being 17 himself: “I think it has been tricky. Years ago in season 1, I didn’t know where the Duffers wanted to go with this character. So I was kind of figuring it out along with the audience.
“But now that I’ve spoken to them and seen the show, I know what they want to do with it. They obviously don’t tell me anything, either. I’m always spoiling stuff, so they will never share anything with me.
“So it’s a lot of figuring it out on my own. And kind of realizing later on, like, ‘Oh this makes sense and this was intentional.'”
