Duffer Brothers Insist They Know Eleven’s Fate After the Stranger Things Season 5 Finale — Fans Aren’t Buying It

Stranger Things 5 goes out on a curveball: the fate of Eleven is up for grabs, and the Duffers are absolutely fine leaving you to argue about it. The twisty part? Only three people actually know what happened: Matt Duffer, Ross Duffer, and Millie Bobby Brown.

Heads up: full spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, episode 8 below.

So... did Eleven die?

In the finale, Eleven beats Vecna, gets her friends out, and decides the only way to stop the military (or anyone else) from ever opening another gate to the Upside Down is to sacrifice herself. When Hopper's explosive device detonates inside the Upside Down, Eleven steps into the gate and is seemingly obliterated while the gang looks on.

Later, Mike throws out a different read: he thinks Eleven slipped away and what everyone saw inside the gate was actually a projection from Kali. Which would be a very Eleven move, but it also raises a bunch of messy questions.

• What we see: Eleven walks into the gate as the device goes off and appears to die in front of her friends.
• Mike's theory: Eleven survived; Kali projected a fake Eleven in the gate to sell the sacrifice.
• The pushback: Some fans point out that Kali seemed out of commission on the floor at that moment, so how does she sustain a projection? Others note the timing and blast radius — if Kali was close enough to fake out the group, the explosion would have likely taken her out before it ever reached Eleven.

The Duffers explain the ambiguity (without explaining anything)

Matt and Ross Duffer went on Josh Horowitz's Happy, Sad, Confused podcast and made it clear the open ending is on purpose. The idea is: you choose the outcome you believe. They do have a definitive answer in their heads, though, and they say Millie Bobby Brown knows it too — they had literally just talked to her about it.

"This is ambiguous. I mean, you're writing from a point of view of understanding what the truth is and the reality is... Ross and I know and we were just talking to Millie about it, but I think it takes away the power of the ending if you tell people what you were thinking as you were writing it."

Brown is sworn to secrecy, and the Duffers are not shy about protecting that secret. In a very behind-the-scenes wrinkle, they even joked that Millie should not tell her close friend Noah Schnapp. They love him, but they do not trust him with Stranger Things spoilers, given his history of, uh, enthusiastic sharing.

Where that leaves us

If you want the clean version: on screen, Eleven dies. If you want the hopeful reading: she pulled off a last-second escape with Kali's help. The creators are not budging either way, and honestly, that stubborn ambiguity gives the finale some teeth, even if it also drives you a little nuts.

The complete Stranger Things series is streaming on Netflix now.