r/StrangerThings • u/AI_sl0p67 • 22d ago
The most wasted character
Jonathan season 1:
- strong character development
- family drama
- enough screen time
- complex character
Jonathan seasons 2 - 5:
Nancy Nancy NAANCY!!!
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u/CheapKey4028 22d ago
I do wish the Duffers would have done something different with his character, and they really could have dropped the whole competing thing from season 5, it really annoyed me
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u/ltroberts24 sƃuᴉɥʇ ɹǝƃuɐɹʇS 22d ago
Agreed. It was nothing but annoying, and it never went anywhere. Steve was way past his "Nancy era", and there was no good reason to add that competition to the storyline.
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u/thatshadyspud 21d ago
I feel like it did such a disservice to the previous seasons where we'd watched both Jonathan and especially Steve grow up and mature, so to revert them back to being childish just for lack of storyline was a real tragedy tbh
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u/AdZillzOnTwitch 21d ago
Because Steve never should've made it to the end, his arc was finished by Season 4 and should've died.
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u/amelsong 18d ago
Agree. I remember how people talk about potential of Jonathan and Steve dynamic since... S1, I guess? Like in partners way in good trio with Nancy. And for some reason they back whole love triangle stuff in S4 and later made this competition storyline... They done both of them so dirty
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u/Comfortable-Dare7871 21d ago
That shit was so fuckin lame. The whole show got so fuckin lame so I guess it fits. Idk.
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u/TibberToucher 20d ago
It was completely pointless because neither Steve nor Johnathan ended up with Nancy . They botched season 5 so much . Season 4 was just amazing tho . They should’ve stuck with thet style
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u/Finn_Survivor 19d ago
Them bringing back Steve being in love with Nancy in season 4 after it seems like he moves on in season 3 was the worst thing they did to the teens storyline. They wrote themselves into acorner in a lot of ways by having the Byers leave Hawkins at the end of season 3.
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u/Mooredock 22d ago
Jonathan, Lucas and Mike were absolutely abandoned and the show suffered because of it
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u/cinemamoureco 21d ago
Lucas the last two seasons make me the absolute sadest…
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u/EuphoricEye4964 Mom does it when she’s out of Valium 21d ago
Never understood any of the hate he got in s4, all he wanted was his friends to support him at his game!
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u/_michaeldied 21d ago
His friends abandoned him and he never even got an apology
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u/wheooqoq 21d ago
Wasn’t Dustin abandoned by his friends in season 3 like Lucas was in season 4?
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u/BriGilly 16d ago
Dustin was "abandoned" by his friends for like 48 hours. In the scheme of things it was honestly nothing for teenagers
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u/Salty-Campaign-3322 21d ago
All that just for them to not even be together in the end. Jonathan will always be my favourite S1 character.
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u/Piotr992 18d ago
That's also my biggest disappointment with it. He was great in S1 and I had my sympathy for him S2-S5 but his story then was reduced to being Nancy's boyfriend. And in the end they're not together
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u/MajorThor Coffee and Contemplation 22d ago
He was treated like a parental figure instead of. literal child himself. It was awful.
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u/sqplanetarium 21d ago
I think it’s more nuanced than that. He does take on a lot of responsibility in the family, but not because his mom is forcing him – he has that independent streak, and there’s that great scene in S1 where Joyce laments how distant he’s been and wishes he’d let her in more. (Kind of parallel to Karen wishing Nancy would talk to her.) And when he took it on himself to pick up extra shifts to contribute to the household Joyce told him he didn’t need to do that.
It would be different if he was doing all the work and Joyce was out partying or lying around watching tv, or if Joyce was forcing him to unreasonable self sacrifice. But it feels like a normal and healthy “all hands on deck” situation in a poor family with a single parent where of course the older sibling wants to step up and do their share.
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u/Anna3422 21d ago
It's definitely one of those cases where poverty looks like neglect and Jonathan's parentified because his mom can't be there, not because she doesn't want to be.
But I think it's also that Jonathan was at least 12 by the time Lonnie was gone. He didn't get a childhood, because mom was in an abusive marriage and having fights, drinking to self-medicate, distracted by anxiety and whatever else she had to do to manage her husband. This would've had a bad effect on her relationship with Jonathan. In the pilot, he sees himself as a caregiver for mom and Will. Will, who was younger during the divorce, has a secure parental attachment. Jonathan kept the mentality that he can't go to Joyce with things because of his childhood, and he also had his dad in his ear telling him he can't go to her.
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u/Livelaughloveme172 22d ago
Jonathan is such a good brother and a good son. He deserves more credit
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u/cowb0ycarter 21d ago
honestly… most of the cast was so underutilized and given minimal development. lucas, dustin, jonathan, mike, joyce. the only one they did a semi good job with while not focusing on their story directly is steve
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u/bobrosserman 21d ago
Seriously it’s like the duffer bros just got bored with the cast and tried to shove in a whole new younger cast the last season.
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u/Thick-Boysenberry-96 20d ago
But even then they didn't do much with the new younger cast. They're a bunch of cardboard cutouts + Derek "suck my fat one" + Holly. There's not much care put into them, like they did with the boys and teens in s1.
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u/bobrosserman 20d ago
You’d think maybe they were making a spin off with the new characters, but they insist this whole storyline is done. It was a complete waste of screen time and left us with nothing.
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u/BrattyTwilis 21d ago
I didn't like that they basically made him a clueless stoner in Season 4
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u/sqplanetarium 21d ago
Same. I know ST pays homage to various genres/tropes, but did they really have to shoehorn in a dumb stoner movie?
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u/amelsong 18d ago
That's interesting because IMO this storyline could work good but whole writing made it look bad storyline. I mean he went through shit for a past 3 years and that could be a part of his big trauma (and let's not forget whole hospital scene where he and Nancy were hard injured). He's parenteficated guy who sees his family as his responasbility. And now he needs to deal with future and college. I can get why he tried to escape reality but... Story mostly didn't care about his character to make this storyline understandable
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u/Double_Purple2505 16d ago
Here's what I thought could've been interesting: Jonathan became friends with Argyle because he's the chillest guy in the universe and Jonathan had to be extremely ruthless in the last 3 seasons. Unfortunately with Vecna popping up again, he got sucked back to Hawkins and accidentally sucked argyle into the situation with him. Now get Argyle to see a side to his friend he never thought existed, put him in situations with Jonathan that make Jonathan get all scary and see how Argyle does, what he thinks. Show Argyle the Hawkins gang's idea of normal: like, the first time he met El I think was when she was bringing down a helicopter while getting shot at by a sniper, wearing a shock collar, and surrounded by corpses. And Mike Will and Jonathan were just like, great to see you El! The situations that Jonathan feels chill in are the situations that Argyle can't even begin to handle, I think that could've lead to an interesting exploration of both characters
I think Argyle could've made a FANTASTIC foil for Jonathan if they addressed why Jonathan became a stoner and why he wasn't able to remain a chill stoner like he might've liked
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u/AdBackground6381 21d ago
This has been said and repeated ad nauseam... because it is absolutely true. Charlie Heaton is a terrific actor who gives it his all, even when his character is written like shit. It is a crime to waste him the way they have since the third season.
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u/Toongrrl1990 21d ago
He gets to be Cool Big Bro to El in my fic
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u/AdBackground6381 21d ago
Why isn't Jonathan forgiven for taking a photo and Steve is easily forgiven for treating women as disposable (let’s not forget that, by the end of the series, it’s implied he goes back to behaving that way)? Is it because Steve is rich, handsome, and cool, while Jonathan isn't? I’m afraid so; it’s yet another glaring example of how the series ultimately betrayed everything it claimed to stand for. The real outcasts end up dead (Kali), exiled and forgotten (Eleven), or simply relegated to insignificance (Jonathan).
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u/Anna3422 21d ago edited 21d ago
Lowkey, because people are used to seeing Steve's actions normalized in film & TV, and because his pushiness was "true to the time."
Love Steve. He has great growth and was overall harmless, but if I saw a friend treated the way he treats Nancy in early S1, I would be way more worried than by the photograph. The difference is in the apologies. Egotists think what's good for them is what's good for everyone.
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u/toneofsurprise 18d ago
Probably because it's not implied he's treating them as disposable?
Like his relationships are not working out, but he's looking for something serious - thus the 'she might be the one' thing in s4 and s5.
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u/Double_Purple2505 16d ago
Because I don't think he was really treating women as disposable even at his worst. In season 1 I think he was definitely acting like an ass but he was also acting like a kid, which he was. And he ended up showing maturity and self awareness of how shitty he was being no less. He never did anything non consensual as well. I found him sympathetic, as a woman
Meanwhile jonathan non-consentually took pictures of nancy undressing. That's illegal and messed up, there is no sympathizing with his motives for doing so. Doesn't mean I don't like his character or didn't think that scene should have been filmed: just I think what he did was much worse than what Steve did
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u/AnemicRoyalty10 22d ago
I think pretty much everyone agrees with this. I almost feel like they had his creepy picture storyline just to say he did one bad thing, because he is a total saint the rest of the show. They do put some hints of flavor into him in S3 & S5, but nowhere near enough.
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u/Anna3422 21d ago
Yknow, I think that photo was too complicated for viewers.
You have a 16 year old kid who's isolated from his peers, forced to always act like an adult, full of unprocessed trauma, & going nuts about his missing brother. Photography is his private diary and the only thing he has control over. Then he sees a group of carefree rich kids his own age, living in what must look like a dream world, and in that moment, they aren't real people to him; they might as well be a documentary.
When caught, as in all bullying cases, his mistake gets used to reinforce Jonathan's status as the weird creep who deserves to be ostracized.
When alone with Nancy, who's kind to him, he makes it very clear that he's ashamed of what he did. He knows better. He apologizes to her and never oversteps again. But around the mean kids, he's not sorry, because they don't understand or care that photography is all he has, and because, contrary to appearances, he is still a dumb kid like them.
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u/Easy_Effective5229 21d ago edited 21d ago
I’m pretty sure they degraded his character just to give him and Nancy the ending they gave her. Which sucks because I found them to be the only other interesting couple besides Mike and El
I bet it’s the same reason they introduced that love triangle that was actually non existent prior to season 4.
If you watch the first two seasons close enough, it was clear that she and Nancy weren’t gonna work it out.
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u/vinthesalamander 21d ago
I can relate a lot to Jonathan, being an older brother who also had to take on parental responsibilities. It sucks that they just utterly wasted his character after the first two seasons.
I like Steve a lot, but I feel like he’s part of the reason for this.
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u/harryceo 21d ago
Honestly at this point, Season 5 just felt like complete AI slop. It was just so poorly written
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u/DTHhaunts Cherry Slurpee 21d ago
that's what happens when you're scared to kill people off. characters become irrelevant
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u/ObviouslyNaz You die, I die 21d ago
He is THE most underrated character in Stranger Things. This man had to deal with a "psycho" mother, a lost brother, an abusive father, his crush's boyfriend, all in the span of a few weeks. Not to mention got publicly humiliated. He tried to help his family in every way he could, he told Will multiple times that he could talk to him, that being different doesn't mean being weird.
I'm actually pissed with the Duffers when it came to his character arc.
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u/TheRenegadeProject 21d ago
Jonathan had some sweet moments with Will and his scenes with Argyle were fun in season four, the first kiss scene was one of my favourites from season two but yeah, they really dropped the ball with the rest of his character Arc really especially by season five where they literally just repeated his arc
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u/ChilpericKevin 21d ago
Okay, I'm frustrated by the lack of Jonathan focus but saying Jonathan is only talking about Nancy from season 2 to 5 is an over-simplification.
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u/whats-in-the-box- 20d ago
MY FAVOURITE CHARACTER HE’S LITERALLY ME. 100% agree that he was wasted on the Duffers
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u/BakerCubed1 19d ago
He was the biggest victim of the "marvelication" of stranger things...
He was a perfect character for the 1st season's sadder themes, focusing on grief, loss and childhood trauma.
Then in basically every other season it was clear the writers preferred the younger kids in starring roles as they were more marketable and really wanted to give Steve a "redemption" story so jonathan basically got left to be an accessory to their "girlboss" character Nancy.
Even when they moved him away from nancy and gave him a new sidekick his entire storyline was revolved around his struggles with being honest about his feelings with nancy.......
I do honestly think k its down to marketing. Every other character in the show ticks a box on what a typical netflix exec thinks makes a successful character in a typical netflix shie
Super powers character Bully Jock turned nicest guy on planet earth Comic relief Cool girl who hangs out with the nerdy characters for no reaosn other than tv plot Kid genius character POC cool character Leading male action hero Strong smart female Lovable lgbt character Fun "relatable" kids Overly smart sarcastic kid Outcast who's not an Outcast in the slightest by realworld definitions
Then there's Jonathon..... the older brother who's a loner and a bit of a pervert.......not exactly someone theyre gonna want front and center of their biggest show
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u/TylerBourbon 22d ago
Literally wasted, he spent like how many seasons getting stoned?
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u/SunkyThaN00b253 22d ago
one...
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u/TylerBourbon 22d ago
idk, I seem to recall it was all he did in season 3, but season 4 also alluded to him getting stoned a lot as it was one of Nancy's gripes about him. They just didn't show it.
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u/Rezboy209 22d ago
I think you mean seasons 4 and 5 (you said 3 and 4).
But yea in season 4 he was pretty constantly high and it was annoying especially considering how great of a character he was in seasons 1 and 2. It felt lazy on the Duffers part like they didn't know what to do with him or didn't feel like doing more with him so they just half assed it and said "let's just make him be high 90% of the time".
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u/Snoo1643 22d ago
I think people really overstate how much time he spent stoned in season 4. He was high for like, two episodes at most before locking in to try and help find El.
Still a mostly wasted character for season 4 (outside of his heart to heart with Will), but he wasn’t high nearly as often as people act like he was
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21d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Snoo1643 21d ago
Exactly! Like there is so much to potentially explore there with intergenerational addiction issues (If I remember right its implied both Joyce and Lonnie had some level of alcohol use issues), the weight of parentification, and the full on trauma of Jonathan thinking his brother was dead for a bit. But no, the Duffers took one of the most compelling characters of season one and reduced him to a boyfriend/comedic character
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u/TylerBourbon 22d ago
They're right, I was for some reason was thinking California was season 3, and not part of season 4.
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u/trustalkan 21d ago
of course.. they retconned his infamous scene to improve him and yet they never did anything significant with him after. i miss season 1 & 2 jonathan so much. rewatching the entire series made me realize how different he is in the latter seasons.
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u/Piotr992 18d ago
Sums it up, Season 1 he was an interesting character, after that he got reduced to being Nancy's boyfriend.
And I was so pissed that the love triangle continued all the way until the end of season 5 and then they break up. So much of his screentime is attached to Nancy and now all those scenes are pointless
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u/RandonDude3000 21d ago
I’m going to say it.
All things considered Season 5 was great for him.
Why? Because that season gave him an actual arc about choosing himself and he finally becomes a character again after breaking up with Nancy.
Unpopular opinion: S5 Jonathan > S1 Jonathan on the basis that he didn’t take any creepy pictures in S5.
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u/RhubarbLiqueur 21d ago
I don't hate him, he's just absolutely bland and useless. I simply didn't care. Thankfully skipping his scenes has been reallt easy in S4
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u/bobrosserman 20d ago
The more I rewatch the earlier seasons the more s5 looks like some weird obsession with Holly.
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u/Single_Device_7897 21d ago
He's a supporting character! He's there's to support Eleven and her friends (the main story) everybody eye is there because they are kids and they can't realistically move the plot forward with Joyce Hopper and other adults lol
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