L i N d $ @ y

You're added Crystal!

Definitely. And she's raising her kids on her own (2 boys at that) so she's definitely brave and strong.






+

Will & Jonathan.

Sincerely, Me.

Love love love their relationship.

L i N d $ @ y

He can be a jerk brother you know? But he isn't and he loves Will so much. I love it when these kind of relationships are explored in TV shows and they are shown in a positive light.

Joyce also wins mother of the year for me for raising 2 good sons.

Sincerely, Me.

Yeah, I think the jerky older brother thing is really overdone. It's nice to see two siblings who actually get along and an older brother who is so protective of the younger one given their situation.

~MelBelle~

That scene killed me

L i N d $ @ y

Or even a mother who doesn't care. I'm glad Joyce is a good mom. I guess the only thing that didn't work is her marriage but it looks like they have all moved on without their father.

^ I agree that was such a great sccene. You can see that Jonathan wants to move on and you can also understand why Joyce didn't want to.

Persephone

That scene is so sad .

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And so well acted by both Winona & Charlie. I think the family really learned to cope when Joyce separated from her husband.

One Thing Remains

Yes it was really wonderful that the Byers had such a great family dynamic and amazing relationships with each other. From the outside they look like a big hot mess, but on the inside they were a very close, loving, tightknit family. Which was in contrast to the Wheeler family. The Wheeler family looked so picture perfect on the outside, but on the inside they loved each other but they weren't close and no one really knew what was going on with the other members of their family.

~MelBelle~

It wasn't only that, it was the fact that in that moment Jonathan felt completely alone - he had to go and get the funeral arrangements set (since his mom didn't sign for Will's *fakebody* release Jonathan had to go back and do it himself, had to go through the whole process alone. It was at that moment he realized he had to do this alone - maybe from that moment on. (luckily he found the truth) but it's scene's like that that just really hit hard.

L i N d $ @ y

That's true. Plus the fact that they just let their son play for so long in the basement and they didn't even know Mike already had Eleven downstairs, shows that the parents don't really care.

Well said. I'm glad that Jonathan found out the truth in the end (with Nancy's help) so it was a very telling scene.

portiaslegacy

Please add me.

Id' like to share my interpretation of part of the Byers family story:

I’ve seen it said that neither Joyce nor Jonathan have much of a character arc, but I’d argue that their arcs tare about their relationships, only played out with other people (Hopper and Nancy, respectively). One of the first things we learn about their relationship is that they have regularly argued about Jonathan taking more shifts at work when Joyce wants him to stay home for his brother. This tells us two things 1) Money is a cause of a lot of stresses, and 2) the money stresses has led Jonathan to disregard his mother’s authority. (Lonnie’s only method of interacting with the family is to call Joyce an incompetent mother in moments of crisis. This probably also affected how Jonathan sees his mom. She’s not terrible like his father says, but her efforts still leave want.)

Jonathan refuses to believe his mother about her maternal intuition an d what she’s seen until Nancy confirms the existence of the demagorgon/faceless man through his photo.* (Jonathan may have more scenes with Nancy than Joyce, but the relationship with Nancy repairs the one with Joyce.) Event then he refuses to let Joyce know that he now believes her/ let her help in the quest until his arrest. It’s there that Joyce has her “you act like you’re all alone, but you’re not” speech. Jim's implied that Hopper and Joyce knew each other from high school, but have since fallen out of touch, which makes it appropriate that Hopper does not act like her teenage son. When he realizes she's been right the whole time, he immediately confirm this with her.

In the season finale when the lights flicker and Jonathan can tell it’s his mom (and Hopper) its confirmation that her words are true. They’re not alone, they have each other. However scared he may be about loosing his family, it’s connected to that feeling of connection that was missing for a while.

Then they can their happy Christmas Eve where they smile more than they have for the whole series and Jonathan’s takes pictures of people who know they’re having their picture taken. Will, who previously was close to Joyce and Jonathan than they were to each other, is lying to them, but that's for another story.

*BTW does anyone want to talk about how part of Jonathan’s story is “boy can’t believe in his mother until a girl he’s interested in is going through the same thing”? There may be some truth to this experience, but I’ve never seen it articulated thus before.

L i N d $ @ y

You've been added and thanks for sharing that.

And regarding this:

I would say that because he & Nancy had someone close to them that they wanted to look for, that triggered Jonathan into helping Nancy without telling his mother about it. He's a loner and to have someone (a girl he likes) have this common denominator with him is a plus for him. He's a teenager and while he may believe Nancy more than his mother, he's not the worst son for keeping this a secret from Joyce.

portiaslegacy

Not saying he's the worst son ever, just this "can't understand his mother until a girl he like experiences something similar" thing is practically Freudian. It may happen in real life, I've can't remember seeing it so explicitly in fiction before. The other stuff is typical teenage rebellion, not too different from what Nancy and Steve do. Only it's about embracing his "me against the world self image", not trying on different personae (like Nancy) or testing hist parent's limit (like Steve).

I'm hoping that next season there is more interaction between the three of them next season. I especially hope that we see more of how Will fits in with things now.

One Thing Remains

Thanks for sharing your ideas portiaslegacy I hadn't thought about Jonathan/Joyce and the impact of Nancy on their relationship in those terms before. My thoughts were similar to Lindsay's - In that Jonathan only started showing interest in the monster and helping Nancy because he likes her and is interested in developing more of a relationship with her. Gives me something to think about