Stranger Things Creators Won’t Reveal If Mike Was Right About Eleven’s Ending
via Netflix 
Vaspaan Dastoor is an Editor for TheGamer. Previously worked at IGN India and constantly tries to get people to make time for an LOTR marathon. He can be found giving hot takes for cold responses at @DastoorVaspaan
After almost ten years, Stranger Things has finally come to an end. Most of us spent our hungover New Year’s Day watching how things turned out for the kids from Hawkins. A lot of rumours and theories cropped up before the finale, with some suggesting a full-on slaughter, and others proposing a time-heist like Avengers: Endgame. However, it seems the writers debated a lot on how to end things for Eleven and the gang.
Spoilers for the Stranger Things finale ahead.
As it turned out, after Vecna was defeated Eleven decided to stay behind in the Upside Down as it collapsed, so that the government would no longer be able to run interdimensional experiments. Of course, this hit everyone like a train, until Mike proposed an alternate theory, that Eleven secretly escaped, thanks to an illusion by Kali. While this was just a theory, the party chose to believe it. The Duffer Brothers, however, won’t reveal if Will’s theory is correct.
Is Eleven Still Alive In Stranger Things?
In a conversation with Variety, Matt and Ross Duffer spoke about what the ending means and how the team figured it out. Eleven had a choice to make: stay back as the Upside Down collapses and end things once and for all, or get out with everyone else at the risk of the government continuing its experiments.
“From a character point of view, not a thematic point of view, we had so many debates in the writers’ room about what we were going to do with Eleven,” said Matt Duffer. “And then 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.”
At the graduation, the distortion on the speaker makes Mike realise that the area around the gate of the Upside Down was covered by Eleven’s “Kryptonite”, so she couldn’t have used her powers. That’s when his theory started to formulate. But Duffer pointed out that there are holes in this theory as well.
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“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? But there are a lot of other questions. Could Kali have actually done that? Could she have possibly been alive? We like that it’s up to the audience. Obviously, we tell you what the characters choose.”
Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, Andrew Stanton, Frank Darabont, Nimród Antal, Uta Briesewitz
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