Will Byers

William Byers, also known as Cleric, The Boy Who Came Back to Life, The Spy, Will Byers, Will the Wise and Zombie Boy, is one of the main characters from the Stranger Things series.
== Charactah Account ==
Will was a shy, artistic boy from Hawkins, Indiana who loved to play Dungeons & Dragons with his three best friends, Mike, Lucas and Dustin. However, Will's life would turn upside-down on November 6, 1983; while cycling home from his friends' latest D&D campaign, Will crossed paths with a humanoid predator hailing from an alternate dimension. Will tried his best to escape, but the creature cornered him, transporting him to its home dimension.
For a week, Will evaded the creature while his family and friends desperately searched for him; he found a way to communicate with his mother Joyce across dimensions by manipulating electricity. Will was eventually captured by the creature and taken to the other dimension's version of the public library, where he was strung up and attached to a mysterious alien vine. Joyce and the local chief of police, Jim Hopper, travelled into the alternate dimension via an interdimensional gateway at Hawkins National Laboratory, and finally managed to locate Will. He was taken to hospital to recover, where he reunited with his family and friends. Although Will returned to his old life in Hawkins, his time in what his friends called "The Upside Down" had left a mark on his psyche; he began to experience visions of the two worlds flickering in and out of existence.
== Appearance ==
=== Comics ===
* Stranger Things: The Other Side
=== TV Series ===
* Stranger Things
* Stranger Things Season 2
* Stranger Things Season 3
* Stranger Things Season 4
=== Video Games ===
* Stranger Things 3: The Game
* Stranger Things: Puzzle Tales
* Stranger Things: The Game
== Trivia ==
* In early development, Will was named Benny. The name was presumably repurposed for the character of Benny Hammond.
* There are some inconsistencies concerning Will's date of birth. In a video posted to the show's official Instagram account, his birthday was shown to be August 28, 1971. However, in "The Mind Flayer", Joyce reminds a possessed Will that his birthday is March 22, 1971. Despite this, the fourth season takes place during March 22, 1986, and Will's birthday was never mentioned.
** According to the Duffer Brothers, they themselves forgot that Will's birthday was on March 22. In debating whether to change it or leave the implications of the goof alone, one of the solutions they suggested would be to once again retcon Will's birthday to May 22, since it can easily be edited into previous scenes via "Frankenbiting".
* In "The Vanishing of Will Byers", Will tells Mike that the Demogorgon captured his character in Dungeons & Dragons, foreshadowing his abduction.
* The comic that Will won from the race with Dustin was X-Men #134. In this issue of the comic, the telepathic mutant Jean Grey uses her powers to pin Mastermind to a wall, putting him in a coma. This is similar to how Eleven ultimately stopped the Demogorgon, by pinning it to the wall and making it disintegrate.
** In the original pilot script, Will wanted Dustin's Uncanny X-Men #269. This would have been an anachronism, as that issue was released on October 10, 1990.
* Confusingly, a set photo of Noah Schnapp as Will Byers is used as the official Netflix thumbnail for "The Vanishing of Will Byers", rather than a still from the episode. In the photo, Will stands outside the Byers shed, observing a strange light emanating from inside.
* The password for Castle Byers was "Radagast", the name of a wizard from J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series.
* One of Will's favorite songs, The Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go", alludes to the events of the first season - "If I go, there will be trouble. And if I stay, it will be double".
* Will and Billy Hargrove are the only main characters to share the same full name, though they each use different nicknames for themselves.
* In "The Body", Joyce mentions at the morgue that Will has a birthmark on his right arm.
* In "The Body", Dustin states that Will once fell off of his bike and broke his finger.
* In the first season, his Dungeons & Dragons character was a wizard named Will the Wise. In the second season, his character was changed to a cleric.
** So far, Will is the only Party member to have his D&D player character explicitly named on-screen.
* In an early outline, Will was originally going to have killed Bob in "Will the Wise" as a result of the Mind Flayer's manipulation.
* Since the second season, Will is shown to possess certain psychic abilities known as True Sight. This is likely a reference to the Stephen King character, Danny Torrance, who possessed similar psychic abilities known as "the shining" in the novel and film of the same name.
* Stranger Things 3 is the only season of the series in which Will appears in every episode.
* In "The Case of the Missing Lifeguard", Will became the first character in the show to utter the word "Fuck"; when he destroys Castle Byers in a blind rage, he curses loudly (though the subtitles miss this utterance). He would soon be followed by Billy, who says the word in "The Sauna Test".
** Between the first three seasons, Will had only cursed twice throughout the whole show; the word "Fuck" in "The Case of the Missing Lifeguard", and when he repeats El's phrase - "She said she dumped your ass" - in "The Flayed". This changed in the fourth season with him regularly dropping curses.
* In the Hawkins Middle School Yearbook, it is stated that his career goal is to be a comic book artist and his favorite subject is Art. His hobbies are drawing and going to the movies. When Will is not studying he is reading comics and playing D&D. The extracurricular activities he did in school were the AV Club and the Science Fair. He was also one of the designers of the yearbook.
== Gallery ==
File:Will Byers 01.png
File:Will Byers 02.png
File:Will Byers 03.png
== External Links ==
* Will Byers at Stranger Things Wiki
Category:Characters
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Category:Stranger Things