Stranger Things Series Finale and Eleven’s Fate Explained

Stranger Things Season 5 has come to a triumphant finale, in a feature-length episode that’s all about choices. The stakes were higher than ever before for Eleven and the rest of the Hawkins kids, with the literal fate of the world resting upon the decisions they made. Dustin had correctly figured out Vecna’s plan to combine the Abyss with Hawkins, and Eleven and her allies put together a plan to kill Vecna, rescue Holly Wheeler and the other children, and then destroy the Upside Down forever.

No plan survives contact with the enemy, of course, and it didn’t take long for things to go badly wrong. Vecna struck back by manipulating Hopper, tricking him into breaking Eleven’s psychic link to his mind and giving him a chance to get to the children. Worse still, Lt. Akers launched a strike on Hopper’s team that apparently led to Kali’s death, and Eleven was forced to course-correct. Ultimately, everything hinged on Eleven’s choices.

Eleven Chose To Enter the Abyss

Eleven had been training for months, and Season 5 already established that she was particularly good at jumping. Unable to reacquire psychic contact with Vecna to take him on mentally, she knew she had to get to the Abyss, and took advantage of the fact Vecna had already brought the worlds closer together; she was able to leap on to the floating mountains hovering throughout the Upside Down, making her way to the dimension the Mind Flayer and all those horrors originated from.

It was the right choice, because Dustin had been wrong about one thing; he’d underestimated the Mind Flayer, believing the entire hive mind was under Vecna’s control. In reality, flashbacks revealed Vecna had been manipulated by the Mind Flayer since childhood, and was doing its bidding; the Mind Flayer had deliberately discouraged him from entering memories of that day (told in the Broadway show, The First Shadow). There was no redemption for Vecna, though, with the killer instead choosing to ally with the Mind Flayer and form a symbiosis.

Defeating Vecna and the Mind Flayer took fighting on two fronts, with Nancy leading an attack on the Mind Flayer while Eleven fought Vecna. She would have been defeated if not for Will, who used his own connection to the hive mind to weaken Vecna at a critical moment. In the end, it was Joyce who struck the final blow with Vecna, savagely hacking at him as he died, ultimately chopping his head off.

Eleven (Apparently) Chose To Die When the Upside Down Was Destroyed

The next stage of the Hawkins kids’ plan seemed to go without a hitch, with a bomb disturbing the exotic matter that kept the Upside Down stable. In a shocking twist, Eleven apparently chose to stay in the Upside Down when that happened, believing it was the only way to bring this story to an end. This had been Kali’s plan all along, opposed by Hopper when he learned of it, but it seemed to be the only choice left when the military captured the entire team as soon as they left the Upside Down.

Stranger Things Season 5 ended on a note of tragic irony; the monsters of the Abyss could be defeated and the Upside Down could be destroyed, but human evils are not so easily beaten. Recognizing this, Eleven seemed to slip away from the soldiers even as they surrounded the team, and she made her way back into the portal. By the time Mike and the others saw her, it was far too late; then, the exotic matter was disrupted and the Upside Down was destroyed in a catastrophic event that seemingly killed Eleven.

Mike Is Convinced Eleven Secretly Survived the Upside Down’s Destruction

Mike, however, is convinced this wasn’t really the end of Eleven’s story. Stranger Things Season 5 ends with a delightful time jump to May 1989, some 18 months after the destruction of the Upside Down, and Mike has noticed the strange gaps in events – Eleven’s impossible escape from the soldiers surrounding them, and a notable flicker he saw moments before she apparently died. He’s deduced that Kali and Eleven hatched one final plan, a last-ditch attempt to save Eleven while giving her the freedom to live in safety.

Mike believes Kali wasn’t truly dead at all, but that Hopper’s love for Eleven had changed her; although Kali still believed she was fated to die, Mike believes she wanted her sister to live. According to Mike’s theory, Kali survived in the Upside Down version of Hawkins lab, casting her last projections to save her sister. She helped conceal Eleven from the soldiers so she could escape down the tunnels, and projected an illusion of Eleven standing in the Upside Down – the illusion fading for a moment before Kali herself died.

If Mike’s theory is correct, then Eleven has embraced the gift of life Kali gave her. Guessing her loved ones will still be being watched, she has headed away to let them live their lives without her, while she seeks peace and safety in a distant place. It’s a romantic notion, and yet it does fit the facts well; Mike has rightly spotted gaps in the events of Stranger Things Season 5, details that some viewers picked up on and initially thought were plot holes. It really does look as though Eleven is still alive.

What Happened to the Rest of Stranger Things’ Heroes

Stranger Things Season 5 was surprisingly light on deaths, with none of the main heroes paying the price for battling the forces of evil. The time jump to 1989 means the show ends with a graduation ceremony, with Dustin stepping up to make a triumphant Valedictorian speech. There were hints the old boundaries between jocks and nerds had begun to dissolve over the last 18 months, with Dustin now speaking for everybody when he spoke of the importance of community and acceptance. He and his friends settled down for one last Dungeons & Dragons game together before pursuing their own futures.

The older Hawkins heroes had moved on as well, but used the graduation as a moment to gather together again. Nancy had dropped out of Emerson to become a journalist, Steve was now a teacher at Hawkins high (sports and sex ed), Robin had settled down with Vickie, and Jonathan was making a movie about consumerism that described it as a force of insatiable appetite – rather Mind-Flayer-esque. The four promised to start meeting up every month, but it’s impossible to say whether it would happen; all four seemed to have moved on with their own lives now.

Hopper had become chief of police of Hawkins once again, and he was now living with Joyce; the episode ended with him choosing to move on with his life, proposing to her. Even better, Hopper revealed he’d been offered a job that would allow the couple to leave Hawkins, heading to Montauk, New York. That ended the season with a beautiful homage to Season 1, because Stranger Things was originally pitched as a show called Montauk, based on conspiracy theories alleging U.S. government projects secretly conducted there. It’s a wonderful in-joke, also raising the possibility Hopper and Joyce will stumble into yet another conspiracy.

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