atimefordirewolves:

the duffer brothers got the nuance absolutely perfect with ‘explaining but not excusing’ who billy is, and i don’t see why people aren’t getting this. people are either complaining he deserved better and deserved more redemption, or they’re saying he was humanised too much and the audience was being forced to like him - no, to both of those things. that’s the god damn point. 

when el goes into the void and sees billy’s memories, it’s a way of explaining how billy became who he is. how he went from being a laughing, happy child to the angry, abusive teenager he is now. you get a visual on how much he loved his mum, and how he lost her due to his father being abusive, and how billy just internalised all of that abuse until he started behaving basically exactly the same way. (you could argue his weird draw towards karen is actually because of him seeking out a motherlike figure, so he subconsciously is drawn towards a woman his mother’s age, but anyway) his dark childhood memories are juxtaposed against the mind flayer - both are dark things which have traumatised and affected him deeply. it explains how he is who he is now. and yes! i felt sorry for him! it was impossible not to feel sorry for him, because no child deserves to grow up in fear!

but

what those memories don’t do is excuse the person billy has now become. sure, we can now understand him more, and feel empathy that the abused has become an abuser - but this isn’t over humanising him. billy was a human villain in s2, and he’s still that human villain in s3, he just additionally has the mind flayer in him. seeing those memories doesn’t remove the way he attacked lucas in a racist rampage. it doesn’t remove the way he threw emotional abuse at max for years. it doesn’t remove the racist, sexist, homophobic behaviour we’ve seen from him. all of that stuff is still valid. the memories just remind us that billy is a human, a human who has seen bad shit, and is now being controlled - because black and white villains are untrue and unrealistic. to make billy wholly bad with no explanation would be unrealistic. 

max mourning billy also isn’t a case of billy being too humanised. it’s called a normal fucking human reaction. yes, her relationship with billy has never been close and trusting like we see with will and jonathan, or ‘not super close but i trust you and i’ll stand up for you always’ like we see with nancy and mike. but he’s still her brother. this is the boy she’s grown up with. he’s abused her, he’s emotionally hurt her. i get that. but max isn’t old enough to have mentally estranged herself from her brother. estranging yourself and cutting off emotions towards family members is a very very difficult thing to do, and takes years. it is not something you would be emotionally able to do at 14 years old. 

she’s seen this boy rocking back and forth in the sauna saying “i’m sorry max. he made me do it”, because he clearly knows knows that whilst everyone else hates him, the one person who might listen to him is his sister. his last words are “i’m sorry” to max. because yes. they aren’t super close, and they have a very very complicated, at times abusive, relationship. but max is still his sister. and billy is still her brother. and in his darkest moments, and last moments, billy is reaching to the familiarity - to the person he knows he’s treated like shit, but can’t and won’t judge him in the same way everyone else in that room does. because they’re family. maybe if they were much older, max would have put up emotional walls against billy. but they are fourteen and seventeen. frankly, max not mourning billy is what would be a deeply unnatural reaction. 

billy’s final moments are defined by el reminding him of who he once was, how he was once happy, and it forces the mind flayer out of him. and he chooses to do the right thing, and sacrifices himself to save everyone. this doesn’t excuse his past actions. billy has still been an utter asshole, and he never apologises for these actions. but he understands finally what he’s become, and how he got there, and in his final moments he decides to do the right thing. we as an audience are actually meant to feel very very mixed about this - he’s someone who’s been painted as unequivocally bad for two seasons, endangering and hurting the characters we love (both as himself and as the mind flayer), and now he’s saving their lives. we can’t whole heartedly say we want him to live, but at the same time, we begin to question actually maybe he might deserve it? he’s been humanised to the point we understand how he is who he is; but we still don’t forgive him for what he’s done. and that’s the point. 

billy’s actions were explained, BUT NOT EXCUSED. by being given a storyline beyond just ‘black and white villain’, people have been fast to say he deserved better, or that we were forced to like him, when the truth is that neither of those things are true. the duffer brothers wrote a human. a human who is flawed, a human who has seen shit, but a human who has actually done some pretty fucking awful things too. explaining his behaviour doesn’t excuse it, AND THEY DIDN’T EXCUSE IT. we just got reminded billy is fundamentally a human - and even the worst kind of people we know have a back story of how they got there, have people who will mourn them, and are still capable of making the right decision eventually. that was the point, that was what they nuanced, and they did it perfectly.

Posted 2 years ago with 4,515 notes
Via: malyen0retsev, Source: malyen0retsev
Tagged: #wow #true #st spoilers #stranger things
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