Meet the Stranger Things Duo That Shatters the Will and Mike Illusion
While fans crown Will and Mike as Stranger Things’ defining duo, Caleb McLaughlin argues the Lucas–Mike bond is the show’s most overlooked friendship—and it’s time viewers gave it its due.
Stranger Things is back in that weird place where the show is massive and everyone has very strong opinions about it, but some surprisingly basic character stuff still gets overlooked. Case in point: Lucas and Mike. Also, yes, there is an on-screen tape mark situation we need to talk about. And Vecna? He is not done with Hawkins. Here is where things stand.
Lucas and Mike: the friendship everyone forgets to rank
Caleb McLaughlin, who plays Lucas, thinks people sleep on Lucas and Mike as a duo, and honestly, he might be right. In SFX Magazine’s December 2025 issue (picked up by Slash Film), he said most fans default to Lucas and Max (fair) or Lucas and Dustin from season 1, but the Lucas/Mike history gets brushed past.
His point is simple: Lucas and Mike go way back. They literally grew up next door, which means they were hanging out before the rest of the party dynamics really formed. McLaughlin even teases that season 5 gives them plenty of shared moments, and he calls the friendship 'underrated.' If you’re thinking, wait, weren’t they all already friends at the start of the show? Yes. What he’s highlighting is that the Lucas/Mike bond is foundational and sometimes reads as background noise because the bigger romances and monster fights take up the oxygen.
Plenty of fans have backed him up on X, pulling a season 1 Dustin line that basically frames Mike and Lucas as the core best-friends pairing of the group. It’s the kind of detail that got overshadowed as the show scaled up, but it’s still baked into who these kids are.
Vecna is stronger, Volume 2 is louder
Jamie Campbell Bower, aka Henry Creel/Vecna, told Deadline he wants viewers stressed out and gripping the armrests for the rest of the season. The character’s whole 'reshape Hawkins into my version of perfect' mission is very much ongoing, and Bower says the current batch of episodes is just the fuse.
"They should feel like they’re holding onto their chairs going, 'No, no, no.' I want to call Volume 1 a setup, but it’s an explosive setup to what happens in Volume 2 and then the finale."
Translation: Volume 1 lights the match; Volume 2 and the finale blow the doors off. If you felt like the show was just getting started... that was the intention.
About that visible tape in Volume 1
File this under fun-with-post-production: fans spotted an editing goof in Season 5, Volume 1, and it instantly drew comparisons to the infamous Game of Thrones Starbucks cup cameo. A TikTok clip shows Will and Robin crossing a park at night with flashlights. When they hit the spot where Will gets a Vecna vision, there’s a big orange 'X' marking it. And then, yep, you can also see a strip of blue tape on the ground. Those are almost definitely blocking marks for the actors that slipped into the final cut.
People had their jokes, obviously, but most agreed it’s a minor flub compared to other shows’ greatest hits. It’s a blink-and-you-miss-it production scar, not a lore breaker.
Release timing
- Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 2: December 25, 2025
- Series finale: December 31, 2025
So: Lucas and Mike deserve more credit, Vecna is winding up for something nastier, and yes, the tape was there. See you at Christmas for the next round.