Mikes Speech - Tumblr Posts

Rewriting Mike’s Speech

I’ve been thinking about Mike’s speech and what it really means. As I saw someone else say, Mike is not lying to El, he’s lying for her. He’s realized that she no longer needs him, but he desperately needs her. She is his hope, his salvation. Without her, he is nothing. He’s terrified to lose her and face his demons alone, and he knows the rest of the Party feels the same way. They can’t let their Hope die. I’ve copied the original text and added my annotations in blue. I hope they shed some light on his words and help you see Mike in a new light. 💙

"El? I don't know if you can hear this but... if you can, I want you to know I'm here. Okay? I'm right here. And I love you. El, do you hear me? I love you.”

[Please don’t leave me, I can’t bear to live without you. I tried for a year and nearly killed myself. And I do love you, just not in the traditional sense. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t love you. Because I do, I love you so much it hurts me. Even though you say you love me, too, I see in your eyes that you don’t mean it. You were trying to break up with me in the pizza shop and honestly, I was, too. But we’re both scared of what breaking up means, especially for Will, so I’m covering for you. I hope that’s okay.]

“I'm sorry I don't say it more, it's not because I'm scared of you. I'm not. I've never felt that way, never! But I am scared that one day you'll realize you don't need me anymore. And I thought that if I said how I felt it would somehow make that day hurt more.”

[I take you for granted. You’ve been in my life for four years, and I now expect you to fix all my problems. But I realize that’s not fair to you or me, and I’m sorry for putting you through that. You’re not a dog or a superhero here to save the day, you’re just El, and that’s okay. Do your powers scare me sometimes? Yes. But does that mean I’m scared of you as a person? No. I trust you with everything, including my life. I know you would never hurt me. I am scared though, that you’re growing up and realizing you’re way too powerful for me and that you’ll leave me behind. Please don’t leave me behind. I’m not strong enough to survive on my own. I would tell you this, but then you might actually leave me and I’m not ready for that yet.]

“But the truth is, El, I don't know how to live without you. I feel like my life started that day we found you in the woods. You were wearing that yellow Benny's Burgers t-shirt and it was so big it almost swallowed you whole and I knew, right then and there in that moment that I loved you.”

[If I’m honest, I don’t know how to believe in myself. I hate who I’ve become and I’m terrified of being on my own. There’s no way anything could ever happen with Will , so you are all I have. I can’t lose you, too. The day we found you, all soaking wet and swallowed in that Benny’s T-shirt, I felt something I hadn’t felt in a long time…hope. Hope of getting Will back, hope of closing the gate and saving Will from the Mindflayer, and hope of a normal life were these terrifying thoughts in my mind. The moment we found you, and my flashlight lit up your face, I knew I had found something special, and I wanted to hold onto it. I wanted to keep you for myself. But I know that’s selfish. It’s not what you deserve. Anyone else benefiting from your hope makes me jealous. You’re my El and you always have been. It doesn’t feel fair to share you with the world.]

“And I've loved you every day since. I love you on your good days, I love you on your bad days. I love you with your powers, I love you without your powers, I love you for exactly who you are. You're my superhero! And I can't lose you! Okay? Do you hear me? I can't lose you! You can do anything! You can fly, you can move mountains. I believe that, I really do. But right now, you just have to fight. Okay? El, do you hear me? You need to fight! You have to fight! Fight! Fight! That's it, El, fight El. Fight. Fight!" 

[That hope I talked about, you have kept it alive every day since. I called you for 353 days, remember? You are hope. You’ve kept me alive. On my good days, my bad days, with your powers, without your powers, you alone make me feel wanted. You alone make me feel like my life is worth living. I love every part of you, even the parts without your powers. I will admit, though, that I feel inadequate to you. You have freaking superpowers and I’m just some dumb nerd who fell in love with his best friend. 

Please don’t be mad at me. This is not something I chose. Things just happen sometimes and you have to follow fate where it leads. As we close the chapter on our relationship, I want you to remember that you are so special. Regardless of your powers, you are an incredibly brave, kind, and devoted friend. I am a better person for meeting you, and I can’t bear to lose you. Because, if you die, I might die, too. Please don’t make me face my demons alone. You saw what happened last time. What if I jump again and you can’t catch me? Will wouldn’t be able to live with himself if I died. I can’t do that to him. 

I fully believe you can shift the world on its axis if you want, but right now, I just need you to survive. For me, for Will, for Jonathan, for yourself, and for Max. If you can see her right now, look at her. Draw strength from her. She loves you so much and has fall apart with you. She needs you, El. Fight for her, for all of us. Please don’t leave us here alone. We can’t survive without you. Fight for us, El. Please, God, Fight!!!]

Wow. This is stunning. It makes so much sense. I literally never thought about it this way, but I think you’re right. It’s a direct parallel to the StarCourt bathroom scene without the happy resolution, because El can’t respond. Oh this is heartbreaking! Discovering they both don’t love each other will be so freeing and liberate them from so much trauma and stress. I hope their breakup is like being hit over the head with a saucepan. Like “Oh wait, you’re not into me anymore, I’m not into you either!” I also think it will be emotional because they clearly love each other and care for each other so much, and just want the other to be happy. But it’s time to move on and discover their own strengths. It’s time to be their own Superheroes.

I have another take on the monologue. Walk with me.

And I’m not saying that my interpretation is the correct one, but rather, I’d like to look at it from another angle and consider another possibility.

With the script coming out and the monologue recieving all of this renewed attention, I’m starting to think that maybe El did believe Mike’s monologue.

And this isn’t just me looking at the script as proof. And while yes, the script did say that she believed it, you can’t take what’s on the page as cold hard proof versus what is on the screen, BUT I do think that what we do see on screen supports this idea.

Oh, I still think that Mike was lying out of his ass, and many have already elaborated on that idea so I don’t really want to rehash it here. We as the audience know that Mike is lying because we get a much clearer view of everything, but El does not get that view. We heard Mike say in the van that meeting her was just dumb luck, El did not.

While we also know that Mike’s reasoning for not saying “I love you” comes from his internal struggles, El’s belief as to why Mike couldn’t say comes from her own inner turmoil. She believed that Mike couldn’t say it because she saw herself as a monster. She has no idea about Mike’s personal struggles and doesn’t really consider it a possibility just because she is too in her head. I elaborate more in this post about El’s dichotomous thinking and how it drives her in this season.

It might be different if, say, El questioned Mike if there was someone else, that would definitely send a different message. But this isn’t El believing that Mike is love with someone else. This is El believing that she is unlovable.

But if she did believe him, shouldn’t she have looked happy? Wouldn’t she be closer with him and not giving him the cold shoulder? Wouldn’t they have a conversation after to reconcile their feelings?

And I agree. This is not the face of someone who is happy to finally hear “I love you” from her boyfriend.

But it’s not because she didn’t believe him. It’s because she realized it’s not what she wants to hear because she is not in love with him.

I talked about it more in this post where I discuss some Elmike and Stobin parallels. Here’s the main point I want to draw attention to:

I don’t think El is intentionally lieing about her feelings. I think she felt this hole ever since Hopper left, and believed that Mike’s love was supposed to fix everything. That Mike’s love is what she wants to hear. And then she finally hears it, and realizes it’s not what she wants. So maybe the face she is making during the monologue isn’t out of dissapointment, maybe it’s out of realization and guilt.

This would be a perfect parallel to the end of season 3, which I talk about here—

—and I pretty much agree with everything I said before.

And think about it, if El did believe what Mike was saying, that would make this line—

—so much worse than it already was.

Maybe El believed Mike in that moment, and maybe it did give her enough strength to break free of Vecna’s grasp, but the important thing is that she fails.

And what does El’s dichotomous thinking tell us about how she’s thinking afterward? If she’s not a superhero, then she must be a monster. She got her powers back, her boyfriend loves her, and yet she’s still a monster. Everything that she believed would solve her problems, didn’t. So what can she now?

I think when El side eyes Mike in the cabin it can be read through this lens of guilt as well. How can she bring herself to tell the guy that fell madly in love with her at first sight, that she doesn’t feel the same way? Especially when this guy sees her as a superhero, the thing that El wants her to be? Would breaking up mean losing the superhero title along with the girlfriend title?

I guess I like this interpretation because it shifts the focus to both Mike and El’s internal conflicts, rather than placing their relationship faults on the other person. Mike isn’t a nerd who is hopelessly in love with someone who is disinterested because she is way cooler than him, and El isn’t hopelessly in love with a gay guy who can’t love her back (even though he is a gay guy imo). They are both not in love with each other, and it has nothing to do with the other person.

And what great irony would that be if they were in the exact same position. They both believed that what they wanted from the other person was their love, and it wasn’t until they got it when that cold hard truth would hit them across the face. Now they are in this awkward position where they believe the other person is in love with them, and they both care too much to actually break the truth to the other person. It’s perfect.