Noah Schnapp Cried Reading Will’s Pivotal Scene in ‘Stranger Things’ Volume 2 (Exclusive)

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, Volume 2.

Noah Schnapp is so relieved.

In the final moments of Stranger Things season 5, Volume 2, Will Byers makes a confession: he tells his family and friends that he’s gay. It’s an emotional scene, and one that Schnapp, 21, says he “cried reading” because the show’s co-creators, Matt and Ross Duffer, “wrote it so perfectly.”

“I was nervous,” Schnapp tells PEOPLE. “I was like, ‘How are they going to write that?’ But I read it, and I just cried reading it, and I was like, ‘This is perfect. They did it.’ There’s no notes.”

He says it’s “impressive” that they managed to keep the monologue both true to life and to the character, who has been struggling to come to terms with his sexuality since his identity was confirmed in season 4.

“They told me they went to some queer family and friends to help understand how to do it right,” he says of the Duffer brothers.

The one thing Schnapp was worried about when he got the scripts was how the scene would go when Will’s brother Jonathan (Charlie Heaton) and then his friends — Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) — all stand up and hug him after he comes out.

“I would say I was a little nervous about everyone individually standing up, and I was like, ‘Is that going to be weird?’ But then, in the moment, everything just [felt] so real and it felt so just natural, and it worked.”

Schnapp was also happy that Will’s big moment “wasn’t just a sob fest.”

“He was happy through the beginning of it, kind of reliving those memories. And it makes it hit harder, almost.

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The confession was spurred by a vision Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) showed Will that predicted he would end up alone should he come out to his friends. The prediction “felt so real,” Will says in the scene, but his mom (Winona Ryder), brother and his friends reassure him that they’d never leave him.

“I haven’t told any of you this because I don’t want you to see me differently, but the truth is I am different. I just pretended like I wasn’t because I didn’t wanna be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends, and I am like you. I’m like you in almost every way,” Will says in the emotional scene. “We like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and trading comics and NASA and Steve Martin and Lucky Charms and literally all the same things. I just…. I don’t like girls.”

Will coming to terms with who he is and accepting himself is what helps him unlock his connection to Vecna and channel his powers to defeat the demogorgons in Volume 1, and Schnapp loves his character’s arc in this final season.

“I think it’s so beautifully done, and I think it was so real. The first volume for him is kind of accepting his own inner — just saying it to himself, that this is real and this is who I am — and finally, when he does say that and acknowledge that, he can harness those powers,” the actor says.

“But saying it to yourself isn’t telling everyone and living your full truth. So then you see, in the second volume, him muster up the courage to live completely truthfully. And finally, by the end of episode 7, he has embraced that and now he’s finally ready to entirely defeat the villain.”

That journey is “just like how real life works,” Schnapp says. “You don’t just all of a sudden accept yourself and then tell everyone. It’s a process of internal acceptance and then outward. It’s just so beautifully written, and it was really special to get to play that.”

Schnapp, who came out as gay in 2023, has also found solace in Will’s own journey towards true self-acceptance. “I always kind of mirrored the journey a little bit with Will and my personal identity, and seeing how audiences reacted to him over the years and embraced him — especially in season 4, when it was really obvious [that Will was gay], and people still loved him so much. I was like, ‘Oh, if they love him that much, what am I hiding over here?'”

Fans’ support of Will has “definitely made an impact” on Schnapp, who says, “I can’t even imagine how much of an impact [this scene] could make on other young kids out there struggling with [coming out], and that’s what just means so much to me.”

Volumes 1 and 2 of Stranger Things season 5 are streaming now on Netflix. The finale drops Dec. 31 at 8 p.m. ET.