After the fifth and final season of Stranger Things aired, Sadie Sink, who plays Max Mayfield, shared what she thinks really happened to Eleven.
In the finale, Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) tells an alternate ending where Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) survives while defeating the Upside Down. But many fans were left wondering what actually happened.
On The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on January 5, Sadie gave her opinion. “I think she’s dead,” she said. “I think Mike’s story is just one last story, a way to say goodbye to childhood. But that’s just a tale.”
She explained that Mike’s story of Eleven escaping to a paradise might just be a way for the friends to cope with her loss. Even though Max and the rest of the group believe she survived, Sadie is happy with the ending’s ambiguity. “I think it’s stronger,” she added. “That’s my take.”
The real answer, however, is known only to Millie Bobby Brown and the show’s creators, Matt and Ross Duffer. On the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Matt said they left Eleven’s fate unclear on purpose. “It takes away the power of the ending if you tell people exactly what we were thinking,” he said.
The Duffer brothers wanted fans to decide for themselves what happened to Eleven, making the ending more emotional and open to interpretation
