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Read Will Byers' full coming out monologue from Stranger Things 5 here
27 December 2025, 16:31
"I haven't told any of you this because I don't want you to see me differently. But the truth is... I am. I am different."
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Stranger Things 5 finally saw Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) open up about his sexuality and come out to his friends and family in an emotional scene that fans of the beloved character have been waiting a long time to see.
In case you haven't been keeping up, Will is gay. References to Will's sexuality go right back to season 1, but it wasn't until season 3 when the show started to dive a little bit deeper.
In season 4, Will's crush on best friend Mike Wheeler becomes crystal clear but the lack of reciprocation really starts to get to him. Amid some confusion over the season, Noah Schnapp later confirmed that Will is in love with Mike.
Season 5 sees Will confide in Robin (who is a lesbian), who inspires him to find the answers within himself instead of looking for them in someone else. However, Vecna ends up preying on Will's insecurities and secrets about his sexuality, showing him a haunting vision of a devastating future in which his friends and family drift away from him.
This is what propels Will to find the strength to come out to his mother Joyce, brother Jonathan and his best friends (as well as a few other people who Will has never even spoken to... that detail has garnered some backlash from fans on social media.)
Here's Will's emotional coming out speech in full.
- Read more: Stranger Things' Noah Schnapp addresses Will and Mike romance theories
- Read more: Stranger Things' Noah Schnapp says he'd still be closeted if Will wasn't gay in the show
Read Will Byers' full coming out scene from Stranger Things 5 below:
I haven't told any of you this because I don't want you to see me differently. But the truth is... I am. I am different.
I just pretended like I wasn't because I didn't want to be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends and, I am like you. I'm like you in, in almost every way. We like playing D&D late into the night and we like that old person smell in Mike's basement, and we like biking to Melvald's for malted milkshakes, and we like getting lost in the woods and getting lost in Family Video and arguing about what to rent and settling on 'Holy Grail' for the millionth time.
And we like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and trading comics and NASA and Steve Martin and Lucky Charms and literally all the same things.
I just— I just— I— I don't like girls. I mean, I do just— Just not like you guys do. And I had this crush on someone even though I know they're not like me. But then I realised he's just my Tammy, and by Tammy, I mean it was never about him. It was about me. And I thought I was finally OK with myself.
But then today Vecna showed me what would happen if I did this, if I told you guys the truth. He showed me a future and in this future, some of you are just worried for me, worried that that things will be harder for me, and it just makes me feel like something's wrong with me.
So I push you away and for the rest of us, we just drift apart more and more and more and more and more until I'm alone and I know none of that has happened and Vecna can't see into the future but he can see into our minds and he knows things and it just felt so real. It felt so real.
At the end of his emotional speech, Joyce (Winona Ryder) immediately comforts him and reassures him that he will "never lose [her], ever". His brother Jonathan, who previously had a heart-to-heart with him back in season 4, also rushes over to wrap him up in a tight hug. The rest of the party then stands up and joins in too.
The five-minute tearjerking scene was something that Noah Schnapp worked on for a long time, wanting to nail it for the sake of the character—and himself.
"He had [the scene] months in advance, and he just worked it and worked it,” Ross Duffer told Deadline. "I remember him telling us…he wanted to not even have to think about the words on the day, because it would just allow him to sort of access this part of himself where he’s not thinking about the language of it all, he’s just letting the emotion come through. That’s exactly what we did, and we’re so proud of him [and] what he accomplished on that thing.”
The scene took a whopping 12-hours to shoot, with coverage of Noah's performance as well as the reactions of the rest of the cast. And even if the camera was just focused on Noah, the rest of the cast stayed for every single take to support him.
Noah also shared that getting to portray Will's coming out scene on screen was cathartic for him because he never had the opportunity to sit down with his co-stars and tell them about his own sexuality.
Noah came out in a TikTok video in January 2023, and most of his cast mates found out through the headlines.
"I thought the scene would be just with his mom, so for it to happen with the entire cast sitting there watching him was just so special," Noah told TUDUM. "I remember when I finished that scene, I ran into Charlie Heaton’s arms and was just crying. And with the cast, I never really got to sit them down and have that conversation about my own coming out, so getting to do it was totally therapeutic and cathartic for me."
Read more about Stranger Things 5 here:
- Stranger Things' Duffer brothers say they have not filmed multiple endings
- Will's powers in Stranger Things 5 explained in full
- Stranger Things' Noah Schnapp says he'd still be closeted if Will wasn't gay in the show
- Here's why Stranger Things 5 recast Holly Wheeler with new actress
- Where to watch Stranger Things The First Shadow online
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