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Let’s face it, none of the buzz lingering six months after the Stranger Things finale is very good. If anyone brings it up at all, they’re going to criticize the terrible acting, the languid plotting, or that absurd final battle. To make matters worse, the one positive thing that people still talk about will never be resolved, because no one who knows the answer will spill the beans.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Millie Bobby Brown dashed the hopes of anyone hoping to know the definitive facts about the fate of her character, Eleven. Brown revealed that Stranger Things creators Matt and Ross Duffer told her what happened to El, but also swore her to secrecy. “They were like, ‘Do not tell anyone. Because we made it a secret kind of pledge,’” Brown said (via Variety). “No one else knows. It’s just us three. And what we do with that information, it’ll be up to them.”
For those who care but don’t remember, El seemed to sacrifice herself after the final standoff with Vecna. Knowing that governments will continue to explore the Upside-Down, and could potentially release another threat, El stayed behind to permanently close the fissure between worlds. She appears to be buried under ruble, but the final moments of the episode hold open hope for El’s return. The show ends like it began, with Mike and his friends playing a game of Dungeons & Dragons. As Dungeon Master, Mike weaves another story for El, one in which she survived the gateway’s collapse and continues to have adventures in the Upside Down, at least until she can finally return home to Hawkins.
Was Mike’s story a prediction of things to come? Was it just a way for him to cope with the loss of his friend? Fans have shared theories time and again, as have the stars, but no concrete answer has come down.
Brown’s comments reveal why we don’t know for sure what happened: because the Duffers only told her the truth, and she can’t tell anyone else.
Frustrating as that may be, a lack of clarity may be best for all involved. Before the last season, fans came up with all sorts of predictions about how dangling plot points would resolve and how the series would wrap up. And, in most cases, the fans liked their ideas better than the story that appeared on screen.
Anyone who needs proof can just look at the “Conformity Gate” theory, in which fans convinced themselves that Netflix had a secret, “real” final episode to release after the finale, one that would be far more satisfying. So fervent was the speculation that Netflix actually had to reiterate that the series had definitively ended, that what fans mistook for a bonus episode was, in fact, a behind-the-scenes feature.
With that in mind, it’s probably better if we let Brown and the Duffers keep their secrets. The rest of us can follow Mike’s lead and just make up our own stories, one in which El gets the arc that we want to see.
Every episode of Stranger Things is now streaming on Netflix.
The post Stranger Things: Millie Bobby Brown Knows What Happened to Eleven, and We Never Will appeared first on Den of Geek.
