Stranger Things : Who Is Mike Wheeler?

I’m not a fan of Stranger Things, but I know a lot of people who love it. They’re usually diehard fans who are always looking for more in-depth information about the show and its characters. With this in mind, I thought I’d share some tidbits that you may not have known about the hit Netflix series with you. First and foremost, Stranger Things is a cautionary tale. Like Spielberg’s War of the Worlds, which took audiences on an extended excursion into state-of-the-art Martian technology. it’s an educational show. It’s also a show that wants to take you out of your comfort zone and shock you with some truly terrifying aspects of life. It doesn’t pull any punches in its depictions of profanity, sex, and violence; it just presents it all in a way that doesn’t make you want to stop watching because its images are too much for your young brain to handle.

About Stranger Things :

Stranger Things is a Netflix original drama series. The show stars Winona Ryder as Joyce Byers, David Harbour as Jim Hopper, Finn Wolfhard as Mike Wheeler, Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven, Caleb McLaughlin as Lucas Sinclair, Gaten Matarazzo as Dustin Henderson, Noah Schnapp as Will Byers, and Sadie Sink as Max Mayfield. The series also stars Natalia Dyer (Nancy Wheeler), Charlie Heaton (Jonathan Byers), and Dacre Montgomery (Billy Hargrove).

Series synopsis:

When Will Byers goes missing, his mother, Joyce, launches a terrifying investigation into his disappearance with local authorities. Over in England, his father, Lonnie, is at his wit’s end and has resorted to smashing pumpkins with a sledgehammer in the middle of the night. Meanwhile, strange phenomena begin to take place in Hawkins: The National Laboratory has shut down a particle accelerator that was supposed to be dormant due to an explosion that occurred two years earlier. An unusually high amount of soil and water samples have been contaminated by radiation. And one girl has been found with inexplicable powers.

Mike Wheeler:

One of the more interesting and nuanced characters in the series is Mike Wheeler, played by Finn Wolfhard. Mike lives next door to the Byers family and his interest in Dungeons & Dragons and role-playing games is more than just a passing hobby…it’s almost an addiction. Mike even meets up with a girl, Max, who he’s never met before, but has played D&D with at school and she suggests that he should read some fantasy novels by R.A. Salvatore. Since that time, Wolfhard has become an avid fan of Salvatore’s writing as well, even speaking about it on several occasions when his name was brought up during interviews.

Since Stranger Things is set in the 1980s and various D&D novels were released by TSR during that time, Mike reading Salvatore’s books must be an inside joke. What it also tells you is that Mike is a huge fan of fantasy fiction. Mike looks up to Will and uses him as a role model, which is why Wolfhard suggested that Mike read Salvatore’s works after playing D&D with Max. His obsession with Salvatore’s writing is certainly an odd one, but Wolfhard didn’t comment on what triggered his interest in the first place. The show also doesn’t provide any explanation or background story for how this came about, but it’s at least interesting to know that it was intentional.