Did Eleven Die? The Stranger Things Creators Explain Her Ending
"We had so many debates in the writers’ room..."
Spoiler alert: This post discusses the Stranger Things Season 5 finale.
The Stranger Things finale left fans with more questions than answers, including one huge mystery that may never be solved: Did Eleven die? Her ending is purposefully ambiguous, and co-creators the Duffer Brothers are now explaining why it was always in the plan for Eleven to disappear.
In the series finale, Eleven sacrificed herself by walking into the Upside Down as the wormhole was being destroyed, effectively killing her. However, Mike told his friends a different story, weaving a narrative where Eleven’s death was one of Kali’s illusions, and she used that smokescreen to escape Hawkins and start a new life in a far away land.
In the end, it’s up to each individual viewer to decide if they want to believe Eleven died with the Upside Down, or that Mike’s story could be true and she managed to live on. Though the Duffers wouldn’t clarify which of these endings is the real one, Matt pointed out some hints that back the more hopeful conclusion.
“At graduation, [Mike]’s hearing the speakers distort because the principal is so angry, and it makes him realize that there was the kryptonite,” the showrunner told Variety, referring to the military sonic blasts that incapacitate Eleven’s abilities. “So how could she have possibly made it all the way to the gate? Not only that. How could she have possibly used her powers to bring him into the void?”
However, there’s another side to this reasoning as well. “But there are a lot of other questions. Could Kali have actually done that? Could she have possibly been alive?” Matt continued. “We like that it’s up to the audience. Obviously, we tell you what the characters choose.”
Even if Eleven is alive, it’s pretty much the same ending to everyone in Hawkins. Ross Duffer confirmed no matter her fate, she’ll never speak with her friends again. “Any contact would risk bringing her back out in the open and starting the cycle again. So, in the story that Mike’s telling, I don’t think he sees a version where they reconnect,” Ross said.
The co-creators added that this ending of Eleven needing to vanish in one way or another was always how the series would finish. “Eleven represents, in a lot of ways, the magic of childhood. And we knew for our kids to be able to grow up, the magic had leave Hawkins,” Ross said. “There was never a version that we had written where it was Eleven down in that basement.”
But coming up with the perfect send-off the show’s main hero was tricky. “We had so many debates in the writers’ room about what we were going to do with Eleven,” Matt said. “We tried to actually express everything we were talking about in the room on the screen. So Hopper’s speech to Eleven is vocalizing what a lot of people in the room were saying. And then what Kali was saying to her was vocalizing the other side of the argument.
“The question was, which of those choices is Eleven going to choose?” Matt continued. “And if you, like Mike and the others, choose to believe that she is alive somewhere, then she picked something in the middle.”
