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Jason Carver: An 80′s Homosexual

Head-canon that Jason Carver is actually a repressed gay man, who raised in a very strict, christian, wealthy, ‘perfect’ family, had absolutely no chance in acceptance of his homosexuality, by himself or those close to him. And so just like the rest of us, when met with outspoken, unapologetically himself, Eddie Munson finds himself attracted to the boy, quickly becoming frustrated with both his own thoughts and how Eddie can be himself and proud while Jason locks himself even deeper in the closet. Not only do we see Jason almost always picking on Eddie in particular, ignoring the rest of the ‘freaks’ of hellfire for the most part, we also see an odd almost out of character moment for him in the cafeteria scene when both him and Eddie, plus their dynamic,  are first introduced. 

After Eddie’s big speech Jason calls out to him calling him a freak and asking if he wants something, causing Eddie to Stick his fingers to the top of his head in mock devil horns and tongue out flicking around, some would say almost seductively. And no, Jason doesn’t immediately snap back with a comment or degrading name, he stops and stares at Eddie, not even mad at the fact, or maybe not noticing, that the rest of hellfire is staring at him amused and laughing at him. No, this boy stares at Eddie, presumably not breaking eye contact until finally Eddie lowers his hands, puts his tongue in his mouth and gives him a playful impish smile. Jason, I swear to you, if you slow down the video has a very noticeable blush, and quickly averts his eyes turning his head away and his posture just slightly falters, making himself a little smaller, If that makes sense. He mutters out a very quiet ‘prick’, which is seen throughout the show to not be like him, usually almost as outspoken as Eddie, especially in-front of his gremlins of basketball followers, bar Lucas of course (who I still love even though he joined the ‘dark side’ as Eddie put it.) Anyway, it is in my opinion as an avid fan that Jason would usually stand his ground longer in a confrontation such as this, yet basically retreats with his tail between his legs once Eddie’s undivided attention shifted to only him, whether it be to make fun of him or not. (Picture evidence on the bottom of post). On top of this, his relationship with Chrissy can be seen as a huge indicator of his sexual repression. For one, out of all the girls he could of chosen he, of course, went for the the ‘queen’ of Hawkins high, head cheerleader, and probably prom queen at some point. The ‘perfect’ girl and the ‘perfect’ relationship. Except, as we well know, it's not. When Eddie meets Chrissy in the woods, it is quite obvious to both him and the viewers that she is not okay, and quite frankly in terrible distress, enough so to seek out her boyfriends sworn enemy to buy drugs. While, we only really see Chrissy and Jason’s dynamic in the prep-rally scene, very very briefly, it can be noted that he just doesn’t take notice to her pain. Even-though they’re apparently in a ‘happy’  and ‘healthy’ high school relationship. This can be viewed as a man refusing to acknowledge his sexuality trying to prove not only to himself but those around him that he is ‘perfect’, ‘the best’, ‘a man’,and so he ‘deserves’ and is expected to have ‘the best’, the ‘perfect’ girl, i.e. Chrissy Cunningham. Either not being invested enough in the relationship to notice her pain, or simply ignoring it to keep up an appearance of perfection. Once Chrissy is found unfortunately dead at Eddie’s trailer it is like a huge slap to the face, on top of a knife to the heart, as while I do believe he never really loved Chrissy romantically, still cared for her in his own Jason Carver way. Not only was his ‘perfect’ girl taken from him, not being able to protect her further hurting his ego, but was suspected to be killed by none other than Eddie ‘the unfortunately for Jason, Attractive’ Munson, the boy who caused so much of his frustration to begin with. Now this is when he snaps, Chrissy is gone, Eddie is missing, and there are no definite answers. But to Jason there are. In his mind it was simple. He ‘loved’ Chrissy and it would only make sense for his frustrated, repressed, grieving mind to try to come up with a logical explanation for his pain. And so his mind spun the story as such, his ‘perfect’ girl gets killed by the very person he tried so very desperately to hate and ignore his feelings for, an odd and somewhat too coincidental occurrence seeing as Jason most likely never even heard Chrissy mention Eddie, let alone mention wanting to buy drugs off of him. The whole situation was sinful to him. As if God did this to punish him for being gay and having those thoughts about Eddie. As if God made Eddie kill Chrissy just to make him pay for not actually being the ‘perfect’ he so strived for. The fact that Eddie was rumored to be a ‘cult leader’, ‘satanist’, and leader of Hellfire, last one not a rumor but still, didn’t help with Jason’s train of thought. It all made sense to him, and he shared this story with the entire town. Immediately calling the killings ritual scarifies, exclaiming how ‘satanic cults’ were spreading along the county ‘like a disease’. Sound familiar? Because to me it is reminiscent of how people would talk about homosexuality at that time. And IMMEDIATELY after mentioning this ‘disease’ brings Eddie’s name into the conversation. Claiming he is the leader of  a satanic cult right in Hawkins. Following his description of the ‘hellfire cult’ and Erica’s short exclamation of it just being a club for nerds, which as she said is just the facts, he goes to quote the Bible saying he was feeling a deep ‘hopelessness’, stopping to find the right word first Quoting: ‘do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good’ going on that ‘God knows there is ‘good’ in this town, there is ‘good’ in this room. Which to me sounds an awful like him saying there is ‘normal’ people in the town and ‘normal’ people in the town hall meeting currently, himself included. Meaning homosexuals and anything other than the cookie cutter standard is ‘bad’. Which is highlighted further in the scene wear Eddie speaks with Robin about how those cookie cutter ‘normal’ people  ‘hunt the freak’. Jason, trying again desperately to sell himself as a ‘God fearing good ol’ Christian’ boy who is going to ‘save them’ form the ‘satanist’ that is ‘responsible’ for not only Chrissy and the recent killings, but according to him every single bad thing to happen in the ’cursed’ town over the past however many years. Really stretching it. From there on Jason is just trying pretty much to kill Eddie, hoping to ‘kill’ his feelings as well. trying to prove to himself, to God, and to everyone in town that he is ‘good’, ‘normal’, ‘perfect’, and definitely not a gay man crushing on the suspected ‘cult leader’ metalhead. All in all Jason Carver, in my opinion, is just a confused, repressed, while still assholeish, gay man with a crush on Eddie Munson, trying until the very end of his life to prove his thoughts and feelings wrong, ultimately leading to his demise. 

I like to think that maybe him and Eddie are up in Heaven  finally talking like civilized adults about themselves and how they feel, Jason opening up about his feelings, not like it matters now that he’s dead, and Eddie explaining himself and his style better to Jason, and maybe expressing how his constant torture of the metalhead actually had a negative effect on him even if he never let it show. Both finally just getting along, still with snarky banter, but more friendly and teasing now. But hey that’s just wishful thinking, plus my love for enemies to lovers, and my yearning for redemption arcs for characters I hate definitely influencing my thought process on this. 

Again this is just my interpretation of the show and characters included. Most of this evidence is circumstantial at best I just really like to think there's more to Jason than him just being a blonde meathead. Lazy character writing just doesn’t seem to be a thing for the Duffer Brothers, and so it makes you wonder what the subtext is telling us. I mean look at Eddie himself, the man has no more than twenty minutes of screen time his entire existence, and yet he quickly became a fan favorite, and for great reason. His character is detailed and unique and absolutely lovable. Again all fitting into only twenty minutes of screen time. For a character they just made for season four and killed off just as quickly they still made his character have depth and meaning. And that can be said for all the minor characters, Erica, Alexie, Murray, Barb, Bob, Season one Steve, before her became a main character, and even sweet sweet Chrissy who we get all about three scenes of, one being her death. And yet, Jason Carver, when looked at on the surface level, is shallow and underdeveloped. I just can’t think that a character who drives the plot of the season so much would be written so lazily by the Duffer’s who are known for their attention to detail. Perhaps, it was a purposeful shallowness to make the audience hate him and love Eddie all the more, but even that feels a bit lazy and unoriginal. But I have faith in the writers and doubt the Duffer Brothers would ever play us that dirty.

So to conclude; Jason Carver is the stereotypical repressed 80′s homosexual with a huge crush on our beloved Eddie ‘The Hero’ Munson.

Picture Evidence: 

S4 E1 Eddie’The Hero’Munson and Jason‘The Meathead’Carver