Here Are All The Questions We Have About Hopper & Eleven After 'Stranger Things' Season 1
If you are someone with access to the internet, as I assume you are since you're reading this, then you know Stranger Things has taken Netflix aficionados and, in turn, the world by storm over the past year. After what has felt like an eternity in the Upside Down, Stranger Things is finally about to emerge for its second season and BOY OH BOY does it have a bunch of loose ends to tie up. Chief among those loose ends is the question of whether or not Hopper knows where Eleven is.
Indeed, despite only having seen trailers so far, fans of the show already have tons of questions about Season 2, but none are as pressing as the questions of what the hell happened to Eleven at the end of Season 1 and whether or not Chief Hopper has any intel on her whereabouts. Judging from what we saw in the final scenes of the first season, it looks like the answers to those queries might be lurking right around the corner in Season 2.
If you remember correctly, in the Season 1 finale, Eleven uses her intense, telekinetic powers to destroy the Demogorgon before, herself, vanishing into ashes. Like most of you at home, I assumed this meant the end for Elle, BUT, plot twist: In the final moments of the episode, Hop drops off some Eggos and delightful Christmas snacks in a wooden box in the woods, and who else would those be for if not Eleven?
Of course, the assumption going into the new season is that Chief Hopper knows something we don't, and, damnit, we better get some answers. Fortunately, from the looks of the latest Stranger Things trailer, it seems like we will. Eleven is back and operating at full telekinetic capacity and Hopper cryptically says "It's not like it was before, it's grown," so we know sh*t is about to go down.
As far as the Hopper/Eleven storyline goes, we could be in for a rich backstory in this upcoming chapter. Indeed, late last year during the Stranger Things panel at New York Comic-Con, David Harbour — the actor who plays Hopper — strongly hinted at the possibility of a complex relationship between his character and Eleven being revealed in Season 2. When a fan asked Harbour whether or not his character would adopt Elle in the show's sophomore season, the actor said, somewhat omnisciently, "I mean, I will say that there would be a rich emotional arc there that I would love to explore should it be in the show."
WOAH. It certainly sounds like Harbour knows something we don't. It's no secret fans think the Chief might be Eleven's father, either biological or adoptive, so it makes total sense that he would know what happened to her after she killed the Monster and vanished. The actor went on to explain how his relationship with Elle might be explored in Season 2; he said,
We end season one with Hopper sort of selling Eleven out. He doesn't know that she's capable of destroying groups of people, but he does kind of give her up to go into the Upside Down to save Will. [...] I think it's a very complex relationship. So should Eleven reemerge, and Hopper knows something about that with those Eggo waffles...there's a lot of territory there.
Since we already know from the Season 2 trailer that Eleven does reemerge to claim her waffles and bleed from the nose again, I'm sure we can expect to find out what Hopper already knows: Where Eleven has been hiding out.
Until then, you can rewatch Season 1 and look for other clues that develop the "very complex relationship" between Hop and Elle.
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