Why Mike Wheeler’s Repetitive Trait In Stranger Things Is “Trademark” Despite Mixed Audience Reaction

Finn Wolfhard is setting the record straight over his character Mike Wheeler constantly repeating himself on Stranger Things. With just hours to go until Stranger Things season 5, volume 2 is released on Netflix, fans are sharing theories and re-watching the series to pick up on any clues that may prove important for the final four episodes.

One observation that fans have had about Mike is that Wolfhard repeats his lines multiple times. Decider recently asked the actor about this repetitive trait with his character. He believes it’s a “Duffer [Brothers] thing.”

While Matt and Ross Duffer, who created Stranger Things, don’t repeat themselves in real life, according to Wolfhard, it’s a storytelling device that they lean into when writing the scripts in order to “outline how important something is.“

“It’s like a Duffer [Brothers] thing. I’ve never heard them do that in real life, but it’s something that I think they did in the scripts to sort of outline how important something is.”

In one early scene of Stranger Things, Wolfhard delivered a line that the Duffer Brothers found really “believable,” so they decided to keep utilizing this repetitive streak in Mike, which resulted in the character having his own “trademark.”

“I guess the way that I did it once, they were like, ‘Oh, that’s believable,’ so then they just kept doing it, I think, over and over again. It became kind of a trademark of the character.”

@F1llenangel1 on TikTok posted a compilation of some of Mike’s repetitive bits of dialogue on Stranger Things, including lines like, “What’s wrong with you? What is wrong with you?!” “All I know is Will is alive. Will is alive!” “Right, El? Right El?!“

He tends to put greater emphasis on the repeated line by projecting his voice more and speaking in a harsher tone the second time around.

Some fans have theorized that Mike repeats himself because he’s a middle child, so he gets lost in the mix between his older and younger siblings, which could be the case within the story itself, but as far as the Duffers are concerned, it’s merely a way for viewers to understand what information is most important.

Since its debut in 2016, Stranger Things has become a pop culture phenomenon in a way that so few shows are nowadays, thanks to a fractured television landscape brought on by the rise of cable networks and streaming services. Fans are so devoted to this show that they dissect and scrutinize every little scene, including Mike’s repetitiveness.

Along with Wolfhard, the Stranger Things cast also includes Millie Bobby Brown, Noah Schnapp, Gaten Matarazzo, Caleb McLaughlin, Sadie Sink, Natalia Dyer, Joe Keery, Maya Hawke, Cara Buono, Winona Ryder, David Harbour, Jamie Campbell Bower and Paul Reiser.

When the Netflix series, which takes inspiration from iconic sci-fi films of the ’80s, began, only Eleven (Brown’s character) had powers. The mid-season finale, released in November, saw Will Byers develop a power of his own, similar to Eleven’s, with Mike and the rest of the gang watching in astonishment as their friend defeated the Demogorgons.

When Stranger Things returns on Christmas Day with the next three episodes of season 5, the characters will be formulating a plan to vanquish Vecna once and for all. Only time will tell if Mike has at least one more bout of repetitive dialogue for fans to analyze.

Stranger Things season 5, volume 2 will be released Thursday, December 25 at 8 p.m. EST on Netflix.