Sadie Sink appeared on The Tonight Show a few days after the final episode of Stranger Things aired and told host Jimmy Fallon her thoughts on the Netflix show ending with the death and disappearance of Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven. The show intentionally left Eleven’s fate ambiguous.
“What do you think? I think she’s dead,” Sink said. “Is it a hot take or something? Mike’s story is the last story and then they say goodbye to their childhood. It’s the last story and that’s it. It’s just something to deal with. (It’s) stronger, right?”
In one of the finale’s most climactic moments, Eleven sacrifices herself to thwart the military’s continued efforts to weaponize her by using her blood to create a new superpowered infant (and risk creating a new Henry Creel/Vecna) as the Upside Down is destroyed. However, Mike, played by Finn Wolfhard, has a different take on what happened. In the final moments of the finale, Mike tells his friends the story of Eleven’s survival, and footage of the characters evacuating to the edges of the world plays.
Gaten Matarazzo, who played Dustin in Stranger Things, told Variety that he has his own interpretation of Eleven’s fate and has no intention of making it public.
“I’d like to keep it a secret,” he said. “I don’t know if other people would say that, but I think whatever works for you and ends the show better is right. You have a right to debate that, but it’s great that you want that. I think they’re teetering on that line very well, because we were already aware that there was a kind of 50/50 split among the fans as to whether they believed it or not.”
However, Matarazzo has this to say about Eleven’s ending: “What’s so tragic about the ending of Eleven’s story is that even if she were there, normalcy was never guaranteed for the people she loved. She didn’t think that was fair, and I think it was a beautiful choice to end her story the way they did.”
The Stranger Things co-creator previously told Variety that there was no version of the show’s ending where Eleven was never there with her friends.
“It was very early in the writing process for this season that we realized exactly how this story should be told and arrived at the ‘believe’ moment,” he said, referring to one of the show’s final moments when the main characters choose to believe Mike’s story about Eleven’s survival. “Once we got to ‘I believe,’ it really opened up. That was the first few weeks in the writers’ room, because we wanted to make sure we got to a place at the end that felt like the right ending for the show, starting with that basement scene. And we built the season up to that moment.”
Watch Sink’s full interview on “The Tonight Show” in the video below.
