As the first part of the fifth and final season of Stranger Things has concluded, fans are already theorizing about what will happen next, but they’re also picking apart every detail. From the flashback version of Will (Noah Schnapp) in the opening sequence to Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) The Goonies-inspired outfit to Vecna’s (Jamie Campbell Bower) complicated backstory, there’s one detail that fans believe to be a massive plot hole. But when examining it deeper, it’s actually more of a tragic reveal.
Will Doesn’t Recall His Childhood Accurately
In the final epic moments of Season 5, Part 1, Episode 4 “Sorcerer,” Will is recuperating from Vecna’s brutal emotional takedown when he hears both Mike’s (Finn Wolfhard) and Robin’s (Maya Hawke) voices in his head, encouraging him to be himself and tapping into his internal strength. It’s in this moment that he has pivotal flashbacks to moments in his childhood: meeting Mike for the first time on a swing set, making that rocket ship drawing for his mom, and building the outdoor structure that became known as Castle Byers with his big brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton). But there’s one big problem: his recollections of that day do not match up with how it was earlier described.
In Season 2, Jonathan recalls this very moment to his younger brother. He reminds him that they stayed up all night building Castle Byers to look exactly as specified in Will’s drawing. He tells Will that he was terrible at hammering. He remembers that it started raining and they got soaked, but they stayed outside all night anyway to finish it, and they both got sick for a week after because of it. “But we just had to finish it, didn’t we?” says Jonathan. “We just had to.”
Considering Jonathan is older and was reciting this memory to help Will snap out of his trance with the Mind Flayer, one of the crucial things to remember about the story, he was no doubt recalling it vividly and accurately. What’s more, he also reveals that this event occurred on the same day their father left. Chances are, then, that Will would have been in an emotional state, and Jonathan helped him build this structure to get his mind off things.
In Will’s memory of this event in Season 5, however, the day seemed sunny and bright. There wasn’t a drop of rain at all, and the pair looked to be happily working away. Will seemed to hammer the nails in perfectly as his big brother looked on, smiling. There was no hint of sadness in young Will’s eyes, such that you would never guess Jonathan was doing this to help his brother forget about their dad leaving. They both acted as though it were any other day. Looking deeper into this vision, however, there could be a logical reason why Will saw it so differently: self-preservation and purposeful selective memories.
Will Might Be Remembering How He Felt, Not What Was True
The logical explanation for this discrepancy, whether intentional or not, is the common practice of young children remembering situations based on moments that stood out for them, versus reality. When parents fight, for example, it can be amplified in a child’s mind because it stands out over and above the smaller, less intense moments. Conversely, a child might recall their childhood home as being a sprawling mansion, only to return decades later and realize it was much smaller than they remembered.
In this instance, Will, one of the characters fans think is most likely to die, may have remembered this pivotal moment with Jonathan as being much happier than it really was. In young Will’s eyes, this is the way he chooses to remember the day his father left. Maybe it didn’t happen exactly as Will remembers, or as Will chooses to remember, but the fact that he’s focusing on the positives is what reinforces the idea that he’s finally tapping into his strength and not his perceived weakness.
Will doesn’t remember Joyce being sad or absent, as she declares she was at times. He remembers the smile on her face when he drew her a rainbow rocket ship using the crayon set she bought for him, one of the early times the show hinted at his powers. He remembers looking up to his big brother as he helped him put together the structure, not that it was raining or that he was horrible with a hammer or that it made them both sick. He may very well have suppressed those memories, deeming them too painful. But it’s more than likely he chose to focus on the important aspects of them, the ones that would help him harness his strength.
In this sense, then, the supposed continuity error is more of a tragic reveal of Will’s selective memory, intentional or otherwise. He focused on the moments when he felt loved, or when he felt a deep sense of pride and admiration for his brother. The rain, the hammer, and his father’s leaving didn’t matter.
‘Stranger Things’ Will Flashback Is Not a Continuity Error
The fact that Will remembers the day he put together Castle Byers with his brother very differently from how it actually happened is a reflection of his mindset. Prior to this moment, Will often focused on the negatives. Now, he comes into his own and decides to change the narrative. He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t unhappy. He wasn’t dealing with his dad leaving and trying to build a playhouse while the rain came pouring down. He was a happy child with a mother who loved him and a brother who would do anything for him.
There have been other continuity errors in the show pertaining to Will, most notable is the moment known as “birthdaygate” when a Season 4 episode takes place on what had previously been confirmed to be Will’s birthday, March 22, but no one noticed. The Duffer Brothers admitted to this mistake and even mentioned potentially changing Will’s birthday in the lore to correct it. There’s also the confusion about Will’s age when he was taken. In Season 5, Joyce mentions Will was 11 when he was taken, but a missing persons poster for him indicates that he was 12. It’s easy for a mom to get a child’s age wrong when talking about something in haste, so maybe we can give Joyce the benefit of the doubt on this one.
The Castle Byers moment, however, isn’t one of these continuity errors, despite some fans labeling it as such. It’s easily explained as being a memory by a young man recalling the best parts of a moment and forgetting the worst ones. It was also a proverbial middle finger to Vecna and the Mind Flayer. While these memories were told so vividly to Will in one way, he decided to remember them the way he wanted to. He has control over his own mind, his own trauma.
Considering the scene plays out as an actual memory that Jonathan talked to Will about in a previous episode, it’s likely intentional that The Duffer Brothers made this the memory Will had in such a crucial moment of his story. They could easily have shown a sad and despondent Will being cheered up by his brother, the brothers frantically working in the rain, or another random memory altogether that got the same point across. Instead, they chose to show an ideal scenario version of a memory that was previously discussed. This doesn’t seem like a mistake.