Eleven lives — or does she?
The “Stranger Things” series finale left the fate of Millie Bobby Brown’s character up in the air, after Eleven seemingly sacrificed herself to destroy the Upside Down and defeat Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) and the Mind Flayer.
But when the story jumped 18 months ahead, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) tells Will (Noah Schnapp), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) a tale that Eleven faked her death and is living out a quiet life in a peaceful town near waterfalls, which Eleven and Mike talked about at the beginning of the season.
In an interview with Netflix’s Tudum, creators Matt and Ross Duffer explained why they chose to leave Eleven’s ending ambiguous.
“What we wanted to do was confront the reality of what her situation was after all of this and how could she live a normal life,” Matt said. “These are the questions that we’ve been posing this season that Hopper just doesn’t even want to think or talk about. Mike’s obviously talked about it a lot, but it’s sort of this fantasy version that would never work.”
“There are two roads that Eleven could take,” the filmmaker added. “There’s this darker, more pessimistic one or the optimistic, hopeful one. Mike is the optimist of the group and has chosen to believe in that story.”
Ross revealed that “there was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end.”
“For us and our writers, we didn’t want to take her powers away,” he explained. “She represents magic in a lot of ways and the magic of childhood. For our characters to move on and for the story of Hawkins and the Upside Down to come to a close, Eleven had to go away. We thought it would be beautiful if our characters continued to believe in that happier ending even if we didn’t give them a clear answer to whether that’s true or not. The fact that they’re believing in it, we just thought it was such a better way to end the story and a better way to represent the closure of this journey and their journey from children to adults.”
Matt added, “And the reality is, if Eleven is out there, the most that they could hope for is a belief that it’s true because they can’t be in contact with her. Everything falls apart if that were the case. So if that’s the narrative, this is really the best way to keep her alive. And it’s about Mike and everyone finding a way to move past what’s happened.”
Last month, Brown, 21, revealed on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon”that she learned about Eleven’s ending by sneaking into the writers’ room before the last table read.
“I saw this really big whiteboard with all of the endings on it,” she said, adding that it was “so much to process.”
“We didn’t sit at a table, we sat on couches and we just cried for basically two hours straight,” she added of the cast.
All five seasons of “Stranger Things” are streaming on Netflix.
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