Did Eleven die on ‘Stranger Things’? Creators answer finale questions

Warning: This article contains spoilers from the Stranger Things series finale, „The Rightside Up.“

Matt and Ross Duffer, the creators of Stranger Things, gather the morning of New Year’s Day on the West Coast over separate Zoom screens. The night before, they finally unveiled the thing they’ve been planning in their minds for years: the 2-hour, 8-minute conclusion to the worldwide television sensation.

As part of multiple surprise talent appearances at select theaters where Netflix displayed the event on the big screen, the brotherly filmmaking duo popped in at the AMC Americana in Glendale for the occasion. „So many of them were decked out in merch,“ Ross tells Entertainment Weekly of the fans in attendance. „It was such a fun experience and what a great way to end the year.“

Today, the Duffers sit down for their final press rounds, including this interview with EW. They address some of our burning questions — notably the true fate of Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven — and identify the one scene from the finale that teases the upcoming live-action spinoff in the works. (It’s not the Montauk callout!)

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: As I was heading into this interview just moments ago, I saw that there’s a massive spike in people Googling, „Did Eleven die on Stranger Things?“

MATT DUFFER: It’s a good question! I don’t think they’re gonna find the answer, though, on Google. 

Do you foresee any point, maybe on a Stranger Things Day 20 years from now, where you would definitively answer that question for fans?

ROSS DUFFER: Didn’t [The Sopranos creator] David Chase break down and finally say what happened to Tony? I can’t remember. I think he may have, but see? It was so much later. Our goal, our hope is to leave it up to the fans, ultimately, and the audience in terms of what they believe, just as we leave it up to our characters in that basement to decide what they believe or not.

How did you guys get to that point of striking the right balance of ambiguity when it comes to Eleven’s fate? Because, obviously, when you choose that route, you have to leave enough evidence on both sides to argue one way or the other.

MATT: Yeah, that was the intention. We spent probably more time talking about Eleven’s fate than anything else as we were working on season 5. A lot of the dialogue you hear in the finale reflects the kind of debates that we were having in the writers’ room. Hopper’s [David Harbour] speech to her, he’s expressing what a lot of us were expressing in the room, but then there was the flip side of that argument, which is what Kali [Linnea Berthelsen] was saying.

And then there’s the question of: Is there an in-between version of that? Does something like that exist? And, if so, what would that look like? Ultimately, we did decide there has to be some sort of sacrifice. It’s funny when you see people getting frustrated with Kali, because of course, she’s telling you what you don’t want to hear, but it’s the truth, right? There’s a reality to what she’s saying. Eleven, whether she lives or dies, makes a major sacrifice. Either she’s dead or she’s left her friends behind for a different life. But I think that sacrifice is ultimately very courageous and heroic. She’s choosing to do that to prevent other kids from experiencing what she’s experienced.

And so the ending, we wanted it to be from Mike’s [Finn Wolfhard] point of view and the kids’ point of view. So they don’t know, and because they don’t know, the audience doesn’t know, because if we knew and they knew, then it defeats the entire purpose of her sacrifice.

Ross, in an interview with Tudum, you said, „There was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end.“ Were there multiple versions of this ending that you guys were throwing around?

ROSS: She was never gonna be there. It was always gonna end in a D&D campaign and then leaving and shutting the door on their childhood. That’s been planned for eight years. I think it really just came down to figuring out the story that Mike was telling and getting to that moment of, „I believe.“ This all happened very early in the writers’ room on season 5. And then Holly [Nell Fisher], of course, came about as we realized she was gonna play a major role in the season and that passing of the torch. So that’s really how that scene evolved over the years, but it was very, very early on in the writing process that we locked in on what those final 10 minutes were. They never changed, ultimately, throughout the course of writing the show and/or in production.

That final shot that you leave us with Eleven and the waterfalls, was that on location or at the studio in Atlanta?

MATT: It was really cool. It was on location in Iceland, but it was a skeleton crew. It was all Icelandic, and we were out there maybe for four hours or so. Millie was actually standing right there out on the cliff. It’s fun shooting in other countries because out here, they forced us to wire her, but Millie was a badass. She just stood there. We had a drone flying over her. It was beautiful. That rainbow that’s there was not added. That was actually there.

ROSS: The only thing that’s added at all with visual effects is just the small town in the distance. Everything else is real.

Were you able to schedule it so that would be Millie’s last day on set?

MATT: Yeah, it was her last day on set, but it was so many months later [after principal photography]. That day didn’t feel like a goodbye day. Her last day on set [in Atlanta] was actually [when] we filmed her „killing herself“ scene. We filmed her vanishing while standing in the gate, and then we filmed her entering the Radio Shack and climbing down into the tunnels. The climbing down into the tunnels was the very last shot.

ROSS: The Iceland shoot was actually pretty recently. It was over the summer. We wrapped production, we were all so tired, and we were like, „How are we gonna do this waterfall scene?“ We just didn’t have the time to figure it out during production. So we waited for a gap right after Millie finished Enola [Holmes 3] and we had like a week opening and we said, „All right, let’s just fly to Iceland and shoot this thing.“ So it was the last thing we ever did on the show.

MATT: Millie was in London, so it did not take her long to get to Iceland. It took us f—ing forever to get out there. I’ve always wanted to go to Iceland and I think we were there for, like, 24 hours.

ROSS: Yeah, because we were still in post[-production]. There was talk of having someone else direct and we’re like, „Absolutely not. We’re gonna be there.“ We gotta be there, but considering we were in the middle of deep, deep post-production at the time, it was not the easiest thing to do.

I also wanna ask you about the Mind Flayer. In your head, is this leviathan creature that we meet in the finale the true form of the Mind Flayer and the shadow substance is a different form of it? How did you envision the mechanics of that working out? 

ROSS: I see it as a version of what we did in season 3 in that the true form of it is the cloud, but it can build itself out, which is what it did in a massive way in the Abyss. But its self is that shadow self, the hive mind version of it, that maybe is its soul or its true self. But we like that there’s some mystery with the Mind Flayer, that we don’t explain everything because, in a way, it is unknowable in that Lovecraftian way.

MATT: But whatever’s up there in the Abyss, they’ve severed the bridge. There is no connection anymore. There’s no way of anything in the Abyss from reaching Hawkins again.

I’ve noticed a lot of fans online asking the question, „What is the glowing rock substance that Henry finds in the briefcase in the flashback?“ I just took that as particles from the Abyss or the Mind Flayer itself. Do you have a specific definition for what exactly was in that briefcase? 

ROSS: We do. It is the one thing that we purposely left a bit of a question mark on that theoretically will be answered later down the line. But that really was the one tiny little crack in the door that we wanted to leave open.

This came up in the press leading up to the finale episode, that there is a particular scene in the finale that may hint at the spinoff that you guys are developing. Are you at a point when you can say what that scene is?

ROSS: That’s that!

MATT: I just said it. The rock! Which is good because if that’s what people are really wondering and asking about…

ROSS: Not to say that the spinoff is about a rock or a mine.

MATT: No, in terms of learning the origins of this thing. I don’t want to mislead people in thinking that that’s really what the spinoff is about. It’s going to answer that question, but it’s its own mythology. So it’s very, very different. It’s not a spinoff about the Mind Flayer. I don’t want to set up false expectations, but for people who are frustrated that they don’t know what exactly where that scientist came from, how he’s in the cave, what the glowing rock is, at some point, that will be answered for you.

This leads me into a big question: What does the future of Stranger Things look like now? We have the animated series coming up this year; the Broadway show is still going, still playing in London; you’re developing a live-action spinoff that you’re talking about. How would you answer that question for yourself?

MATT: To us, it’s just one step at a time. Right now, everything you said is all we have planned…Well, there’s one other thing I can’t talk about, so I just sort of lied to you, that is also really cool. But the live-action spinoff is what the main focus is right now. I wish I could talk about it more, but we have a specific idea or philosophy for how the show and the Stranger Things universe, if you wanna call it that, can continue. It’s very different, I would say, than something like Game of Thrones or Star Wars, because we’re just not like that.

ROSS: And we’re very proud of Tales from ’85 and the play, but those are mining the last remaining small gaps in the narrative that we told over the course of Stranger Things. So to be able to move forward, we have to build out a new mythology because otherwise we’re just gonna keep finding these little narrow gaps and it’s just gonna get narrower and narrower and more forced. So the goal is to break it wide open and do something very new and very different.

MATT: I have to say, it has been so fun just creating new characters and a new mythology, just because you’re starting from the ground floor. It’s exhilarating, and I can’t wait to say more about it when I’m allowed to, but Netflix PR is listening in.

How hands-on do both of you foresee yourselves being on Stranger Things moving forward? It’s not a secret that you guys have other Netflix shows that you’re working on at the moment. You also have a deal with Paramount, you’re going to be making movies very soon.

MATT: It’s different than the shows that we’re producing. We’re super stoked about the two shows that are coming out, fairly soon, actually: Something Very Bad Is Going to Happen and The Boroughs. But our philosophy there more or less is we’re finding talent and creatives that we deeply respect and helping them get the show off the ground, mentoring them, teaching them about what we’ve learned, the mistakes we’ve made so hopefully they don’t make the same mistakes. That’s sort of our role as far as that’s concerned.

We’re gonna be much more creatively and deeply involved in the Stranger Things spinoff. It’s a story that we came up with, and…Man, I’m boxing myself in. I can’t tell you much about it. I should just be very vague and say, „We’re gonna be extremely involved in it. We’re not gonna be showrunning it, however.“ So it will be a step back, but obviously we’re gonna be involved day-to-day. We’re gonna get back to work on it on Monday, so it is not a passive involvement. It’s our goal to make it an incredible show. We’re gonna be there from beginning to end. 

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and brevity.

All episodes of Stranger Things season 5 are now available to stream on Netflix.

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