Footage from “One Last Adventure” shows the Duffer Brothers and writers arguing for an ambiguous ending.

Eleven’s Stranger Things fate debated by writers in new documentary: ‘She has to leave’

Footage from "One Last Adventure" shows the Duffer Brothers and writers arguing for an ambiguous ending.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in *Vanity Fair*, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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January 12, 2026 9:00 a.m. ET

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Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) in 'Stranger Things' series finale. Credit:

**Warning: This article contains spoilers from *Stranger Things* series finale "The Rightside Up."**

A new Netflix documentary about the making of *Stranger Things* season 5 takes viewers inside the writers' room and the debate about the fate of Millie Bobby Brown's Eleven.

Series finale "The Rightside Up" premiered on New Year's Eve, and ever since fans have been debating what really happened to the waffle-loving telekinetic. Did she die and go down with the ship, as it appeared when the Upside Down collapsed? Did she secretly get away and go off on her own, as Mike (Finn Wolfhard) fantasized about?

*One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5*, released on Netflix Monday, showed creators Matt and Ross Duffer debating the matter with series writers Paul Dichter, Kate Trefry, and Caitlin Schneiderhan.

Millie Bobby Brown's final scene as Eleven on 'Stranger Things'.

"The whole episode has to be building towards 'Eleven is going to kill herself,'" Ross began in the footage, which shows their Los Angeles office space.

"I think that it's like, Is she still deciding? Has she already decided?" Dichter put forth.

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Ross advocated to "keep toying with the audience" along the way, noting, "It's what everyone's gonna keep expecting." However, Matt pointed out the problem with that approach, which was, "We think she's made the choice to live. Just kidding, she hasn't. Just kidding, she has."

"I don't know if we have to play it like that.... We keep it ambiguous," Ross said.

*One Last Adventure* chronicled the big race to finish the script for the series finale, which wasn't fully completed until after the crew started filming the episode. A sequence that takes place later on in the documentary involving the writers showed Matt explaining the lack of character deaths in order to maintain the spirit of fun in *Stranger Things*.

Millie Bobby Brown's Eleven in 'Stranger Things' series finale.

"I always thought that she represents magic, and so she has to leave," Matt said of Eleven. "She has to be gone in order for them to move on."

"The door to Narnia closes for you, and then some other kids are gonna find another door to Narnia later, but you're never going back," Dichter added.

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It still doesn't answer the fundamental question one way or the other, but that's the point. As Matt detailed to ** in a series finale interview, "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."

The brothers haven't said if they'd ever definitively answer this lingering question. "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," Ross told EW.

*One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5*, directed by Martina Radwan, is now available to stream on Netflix.

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