By Chris Snellgrove
| Published 23 seconds ago
The Stranger Things series finale ended (and beware major spoilers if you haven’t watched it yet!) with a major question: Is Eleven alive or dead?
On one hand, we see her seemingly die, blown away along with the Upside Down; on the other hand, Mike delivers a fairly compelling theory to his friends about how she might still be alive. Whether she lived or died was meant to be an open question for fans, but in a surprise twist, the Stranger Things showrunners, the Duffer Brothers, gave a recent interview in which they strongly hinted that Eleven was still alive.
Eleven Survived The End Of Stranger Things
In a recent interview with Variety, the Duffers touched on a wide range of topics, including the specific media (from E.T. to Baldur’s Gate 3) that inspired the series finale. At one point, the interviewer mentioned Mike’s theory about Eleven surviving her apparent death, and Matt Duffer echoed the young character’s biggest points: namely, that the military’s technology “kryptonite” would have prevented her from making it “all the way to the gate.” Furthermore, he asked the big question many fans have been wrestling with: “How could she have possibly used her powers to bring him into the void?”
After this, the Stranger Things co-creator tried to demur, noting that fans would have to decide for themselves if Mike’s theory was correct. After all, viewers don’t know if Kali could “have actually done that” or if she could “have possibly been alive.” He wrapped up this train of thought by saying that he and his brother “like that it’s up to the audience.” Clearly, the Duffers wanted to have their cake and eat it too by letting viewers decide for themselves whether Eleven survived; however, Matt Duffer’s thoughts during this interview more or less confirm that she must have survived.
The Power Of Kryptonite
As the Stranger Things guru noted, Eleven should have been affected by the military’s sonic blasters, which have the ability to completely rob Eleven of her powers. Because of this, her geeky friends dubbed this technology Kryptonite. During his high school graduation, Mike looked at some speakers and belatedly realized that the military had all of their sonic blasters firing after he and his friends escaped the Upside Down. Previously, this technology put Eleven in the fetal position, so if she were really with her friends the whole time, she wouldn’t have been able to stand up, much less speedrun to the gate without any soldiers seeing her.
Even if she could have physically gotten up and escaped, the Kryptonite would have kept her from making mental contact with Mike, which allowed them to have a sad farewell before she seemingly sacrificed herself. I say “seemingly” because the Stranger Things co-creator is correct: pretty much nothing about Eleven’s final moments makes sense if she is being hit by the Army’s sonic blasters. Fans may quibble about whether Kali was already dead or had the juice to create such a robust mental illusion, but the fact remains that Eleven simply couldn’t have been with the group, escaped the soldiers, and communicated with Mike while her powers were disabled, meaning her final moments must have been a mental illusion.
It’s Official: Your Favorite Character Is Still Alive
For me, this was enough to confirm that Eleven really and truly survived the final episode of Stranger Things. For a time, I’m sure the Duffers will continue to say it’s up to the fans to decide, but they basically wrote themselves into a corner with this character’s final scene. If Eleven couldn’t so much as get up, she couldn’t escape, and if she couldn’t use her powers, she couldn’t talk to Mike. Now, even Matt Duffer is pointing out how impossible this sequence of events was, which is as close to an official confirmation that Eleven survived as we are ever going to get.
Eventually, the Duffers may definitively reveal Eleven’s fate in a future spinoff or (with our luck) another Broadway play most people will never see. For now, though, this character’s biggest fans can rest assured that the Stranger Things creators accidentally confirmed that the fandom’s favorite character didn’t actually die and that what we saw of her had to be a mental projection of some stripe. If that’s not worth celebrating with a couple of Eggo Waffles, I don’t know what is!