Briggs is restless, bored with the mundanity of Hawkins and the drag of rural Indiana November. That energy is channeled into laps up and down the Hawkins High pool, where he's worked his way up the ranks of the swim team and found a rival in one of...
BRIGGS REYES IS RESTLESS. Frankly, not much has happened in Hawkins since his dad skipped town and his mom fell in love with the overly optimistic postman. A few years of boiling anger and rebellious behavior earned him a sticky reputation of either "troubled" or "troublemaker," and even though Briggs likes to think he's turned himself around, that period of his life doesn't exactly make him the most approachable guy.
That burning anger, that desire to raze Hawkins to the ground and set the world aflame for doing his mother and himself so wrong, it never really went away—but it's settled to a dull ember in the very back of Briggs' mind, energy channeled into powerful strokes through the water of the Hawkins High pool, where he's worked his way up the ranks of the swim team and found a rival in one of its captains, the arrogant king of Hawkins High himself. Steve Harrington.
After Briggs' mom remarried and he gained a nerdy little stepsister, after Jonathan Byers dragged him out of the dark recesses of his mind and knocked some sense into him, after Briggs decided to stop hating and start tolerating, Briggs fell into Hawkins' routine of utter stagnancy: competing against Steve, driving his sister around, spending late nights at the skate park with Mack, listening to music with Jon.
But a new problem is poking at the threshold of Hawkins' stability, sending threatening ripples in every direction. Weird things are happening—disappearances, deaths, suspicious behavior—all of it a bit too personal. Briggs wanted something different, but this really isn't what he had in mind. And then there's the fact that he's starting to realize that maybe he hates Steve Harrington so much because he doesn't hate him at all.
Maybe it's the opposite of hatred. Maybe it's not an issue with accepting that he likes Steve, but an issue with what liking Steve says about himself in a small midwestern town where anyone dubbed "queer" has a target painted on their backs.
As Jon's little brother goes missing and the secure mundanity of Hawkins starts to crumble, Briggs thinks he really, really doesn't have time for an identity crisis right now. But it seems his heart doesn't particularly care about timing.
