Millie Bobby Brown Praises Eleven’s Beautiful, Cathartic Ending — But Mike’s Version Has Her Heart

If you walked away from the Stranger Things season 5 finale feeling a little deflated, you are not alone. But Millie Bobby Brown? She is pretty satisfied with where Eleven landed. And by landed, I mean what looks like a very final ending.

What the finale actually does

About halfway through the finale, Eleven makes the call to stay inside the gate as Hopper's bomb goes off. The blast tears through the Upside Down and takes out everything in it, including El. It is a gutsy, blunt ending for a character who has spent five seasons being treated like a weapon, and Brown told Netflix's Tudum she has wanted that choice for a long time and found it cathartic.

"I just think it's incredibly important that it all ends for her, and the suffering and the pain end."

In her view, the sacrifice locks the door behind her so Dr. Kay or anyone else can never exploit her powers again or crack open another gate. Clean break. No more experiments. No more collateral damage.

The epilogue muddies it on purpose

Then the epilogue rolls in and throws sand in the gears. Mike refuses to accept that El is dead and tells the group a different version: Kali projected an image of Eleven at the gate while the real El slipped away behind the soldiers. In his head, she is living far off the grid in Iceland, visiting the waterfalls the two of them talked about earlier. Brown said she kind of loves that flourish because it hints at a bigger purpose for Kali's abilities.

So... is Eleven actually dead?

• The Duffer brothers told the Happy, Sad, Confused podcast they left El's fate ambiguous on purpose so fans can choose their own read. They added that only the two of them and Brown know the definitive answer.
• Brown is at peace with the sacrifice and the idea that it stops people like Dr. Kay from weaponizing her again or reopening a gate.
• Sadie Sink gave the blunt version on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon: she thinks El is gone and that Mike's story is just his final way of coping.
• Inside the show, Mike does not believe she died. His daydream puts her in Iceland after Kali's projection at the gate lets El slip out behind the soldiers.

However you read it, the Duffers left real wiggle room for your own canon while giving Brown the tragic, self-determined ending she wanted for El. The complete Stranger Things series is streaming on Netflix now.