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While a great many fans of Stranger Things found plenty to be disappointed by vis-à-vis the series finale, what might have been the most disheartening for Winona Ryder enthusiasts, ergo Joyce Byers enthusiasts, is the distinct lack of screen time she was given to “complete her character arc.” In fact, unlike the other characters, who get “serviced” within the first fifteen minutes, there is no proper sign of Joyce (as in, she actually gets some dialogue) until roughly the forty-three-minute-forty-eight-second mark (specifically, when she asks Will, “What’s going on? What do you see?”—still his perennial and most ardent supporter, even if usually in a panicked sort of way).
Her seemingly “sudden” appearance in The Abyss with the others feels both somewhat odd and jarring. Even though she was technically at the bottom of the radio tower at the outset, so her presence shouldn’t be unexpected. And yet, that’s exactly how it comes across (as if she was “shoved into the plot out of nowhere”) because it was really only Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Will (Noah Schnapp), Steve (Joe Keery) and Robin (Maya Hawke) who are fully “paraded” in the shot during the start of their planned ascent to reach The Abyss. Oh sure, there’s a blink-and-you’ll-miss it moment of Joyce down there with them at about the six-minute-fifty-eight-second mark, but it does little to ensure that the very ephemeral image “lodges itself” in the viewer’s memory. Hence, the feeling of later being like, “Oh yeah, Joyce went with them too.”
As for Joyce’s mostly spectral presence among the youths, it makes sense. Because, although she might be the only “adult” there, she’s still, at her core, just “one of the kids.” This vibe perhaps also a result of Ryder being forever associated as the “angsty teen” of her best-loved 80s movies (i.e., Beetlejuice and Heathers, which came out in 1988 and 1989 respectively, when Ryder was seventeen and eighteen years old).
Although there is a brief and clear opportunity to showcase her a bit more as the supposed nonet climbs the tower, any such attempt is completely lost in the chaos and drama of Steve nearly falling off of it and then Jonathan, of all people, being the one to reach his hand out and pull him back up. Then, during the moment when Nancy is the first to push through the hole that leads into The Abyss, the only characters that are foregrounded at the top of the tower, waiting to follow her up, are Steve, Jonathan, Mike, Dustin, Robin and Lucas. In order to even notice that Will and Joyce are still there, the viewer has to really scour for their presence in the back. And since “a big thing” about Joyce’s presence was never made in the first place (in contrast to Will, who at least got his “love you, no homo” talk from Mike at one point along the climb), it remains easy to forget that she was ever there to begin with.
Her presence isn’t any better emphasized when the theoretical nonet proceeds to walk together through The Abyss, with still more heart-to-hearts being meted out to only select “duos” of the group, including Steve and Jonathan and Mike and Nancy. So it is that almost a full fifty minutes go by without Joyce saying a single word, perhaps leading one to believe that it is just as many fans have suspected: there were major cuts in the editing process (take that to mean slicing away at the script itself or doing away with actual footage)—even though The Duffer Brothers told Deadline that edits were minimal. If that’s true, it appears as if the edits that were made found Joyce to be the easiest “casualty” to “hack away” at.
And, speaking of hacking away, her only crowning moment of the finale comes around the one-hour-twelve-minute mark, when she delivers her now iconic line, “You fucked with the wrong family” before being the one to do the honor of “finishing” Vecna/Henry by chopping his head off. And yes, her use of an axe is a callback to the season one episode, “The Body,” where she starts chopping away the wall of her house in a desperate attempt to figure out where Will’s communication is coming from. Though, to be fair, it seems she’s often packing an axe…her overt weapon of choice.
Although some would argue that being the one to deliver the coup de grâce to Vecna is all the time Joyce needed to make her appearance worthwhile, it still leaves one with the sense that there was more to be done with her character. If for no other reason than her famous range of facial expressions. Alas, after this moment of glory/vindication, Joyce doesn’t get any other kind of “big scene” until she’s shown at Enzo’s (a big symbolic deal, obviously) with Jim Hopper (David Harbour) around the one-hour-forty-three-second mark. This after the “Eighteen Months Later” title card has been shown, and the fates of the “main youths” have been revealed in great detail (with the graduation scene taking up plenty of time).
Which means, once again, Joyce (and far more than her “contemporary,” Hopper) is essentially shafted—and given so little to “do” for this episode (then again, it’s not as if she’s as “barely there” as Mrs. Wheeler [Cara Buono], but, then again, Buono isn’t considered as “main cast”-caliber like Ryder). Well, apart from excitedly accepting Hopper’s marriage proposal (which eagle-eyed fans were quick to notice involved him being cheap enough to use the same ring that Jonathan was planning to propose to Nancy with, but, sure, it could also be seen as a “sweet” full-circle scenario). Oh, if only Lily Allen could time travel herself through some other wormhole to warn Joyce what that marriage will be like…regardless of whether they’re in Hawkins or Montauk. For, as he tells her, “Montauk’s looking for a new chief of police.” This specific location being a nod to The Duffer Brothers’ original title for the show, Montauk (itself a nod to the Montauk Project, which the premise of the series was inspired by). Not that either would be too particular about their next destination so long as it isn’t Hawkins.
So it is that Joyce is given, at best, about ten minutes of quality scene time. Granted, Joyce standing back and “getting out of the way” of the youths—particularly Will, who she’s been infamously overprotective of for too long—is yet another layer to the motif of “passing the baton” to the next generation so that they, too, can have their “turn” (a.k.a. “time to shine”). Just as that theme is underscored during the last scene of the finale, when Mike looks back fondly and yearningly at the new group of youths starting up the game that he and his friends will seemingly never play again. As for Ryder, hopefully she’ll play again—that is, another character as memorable as Joyce (minus her minimal part in the finale).
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Genna Rivieccio
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