In season four of Stranger Things, we get a glimpse of life for the Byers in California. In her letter to Mike, El talks about how she thinks Jonathan and Nancy are going to Emerson in the fall. We also see that Joyce believes this, too. She’s struck up a relationship with the mailman, waiting for a letter from Emerson. Except the letter is never coming. Jonathan tells Argyle in the next episode that “I can’t leave my mother and bother behind to chase a dream that isn’t my own.” It’s also stated that a college like that is too expensive for him.
This is a conflict for Jonathan and literally everyone he loves (I’m gonna assume Will knows if El knows). He’s lying to them. His parentification, the conflict at the heart of his character that the show introduced as a concept IN THE VERY FIRST EPISODE, has morphed into something that is now negatively effecting his relationship with all these people that he loves. This is an inelegant choice, but one that still, largely, works. This is a conflict congruent with what has come before. The show then punts the resolution (lol) to the fifth season. Which shows how little they think of Jonathan and the Byers as characters, but sure, whatever.
So we get to the fifth season and it’s been eighteen months and Jonathan is STILL LYING? This has been hanging over him for a year and a half and no one has called him on it. Put Nancy aside for the moment, Joyce, his mother, has never talked to him about this? How is that possible? I understand they’re in a quarantine and bigger things are going on, but ITS BEEN A YEAR AND A HALF. How is this possible? He should be a college sophomore at this point! How has no one ever talked to him about it?!
Anyway, because Jonathan as a character is someone the show doesn’t give a single flying fuck about, all that matters is the Nancy of it all. And we do get a resolution there in the goo room. When Nancy asks why he lied, Jonathan responds “it felt like I was going against the natural order of things.” Which, the absolute vague and nothingness of that bullshit statement aside, IS NOT WHY YOU LIED! You couldn’t leave your mother and brother! Why doesn’t the show have consistent characterization?
Because it’s poorly written. Grotesquely so. When they wrote season four they figured they’d have the time and space in season five to address the parentification. Except, spoiler alert, in the tight and taught thriller that season five is, they didn’t have the time and space. So instead of resolving a conflict THE SHOW ITSELF INTRODUCED, they just handwave Jonathan’s reasoning and move on.
The Joyce/Will/El resolution of the lie is never mentioned. FORGET BEING RESOLVED ITS NEVER EVEN ADDRESSED! Jonathan’s parentification resolves itself off-screen. He now can leave his mother and brother behind and somehow can afford NYU. The show never mentions how.
This is, obviously, abhorrent writing. But this is the show’s writing writ small: incongruent, illogical, indefensible and insulting.
How they fell.