Stranger Things Fans Are Furious Over Eleven's Fate In The Series Finale

You better be runnin' up that road and up that hill if you haven't watched the "Stranger Things" series finale, because there are spoilers ahead.

After nearly a decade, "Stranger Things" is over. This is the show that put Netflix on the map as not just a producer of acclaimed prestige TV series like "House of Cards," but as a studio that could produce pieces of pop culture that get the whole world talking about them. This is the closest thing the streamer has to a "Game of Thrones," and now "Stranger Things" has ended in a kind of underwhelming manner.

Don't try to think too much about how the fight against Vecna ended in what felt like five minutes, or how Henry Creel's (Jamie Campbell Bower) backstory and relationship to the Mind Flayer was only really explored in a "Stranger Things" stage play that most people aren't familiar with, or even how many threads were simply forgotten — like the military's experiments on pregnant women, why the demo-creatures seemingly disappeared in the show's final episodes, or how Max (Sadie Sink) graduated from high school after being in a coma for a year.

Then there's Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), the key to the show and the other side of the coin for how this whole thing started. After five seasons of being tortured by scientists, inter-dimensional monsters, and the U.S. military, her reward was ... to die? Or worse, live by herself in the middle of nowhere. It was a highly disappointing conclusion to her story, and fans are not happy about it. As one Twitter/X user put it, "If one person should've had a much deserved happy ending, [it] was EL and nobody else." The fact she ends up either dead or completely alone is disrespectful to the character.

One fan took to social media to complain how safe the "Stranger Things" finale felt, at least compared to the way creators Matt and Ross Duffer teased a bunch of character deaths. "But in the end, only Eleven dies, and she was the one who deserved a happy ending, thank you for the big joke," as they put it.

Indeed, the "Stranger Things" finale copped out when it came to character deaths, only really killing off Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) in a rather underwhelming way that took away from her character arc. To either do the same to Eleven and have her sacrifice herself to save a world that was only ever cruel to her or, worse, have her spend her days separated from the community that taught her about joy and happiness, is absolutely mean and a betrayal of the other characters that people fell in love with in the first place.

One "Stranger Things" fan put it best when they wrote on Twitter/X, "When are writers going to realize that audiences are very tired of seeing female characters sacrifice everything only to end up alone and isolated? Eleven was manipulated and abused her entire life, she found a home and family, and forcing her to give that up is not empowering."

If we are to believe Mike's "happy ending" where Eleven is alive, then we are meant to believe that her happiness also means forsaking the love and family she found. She can't win as long as she exists, and even if she doesn't die, she's but a ghost, unable to find companionship or love.

"Stranger Things" may not have pulled an egregious "Bran the Broken"-style ending the way "Game of Thrones" did, but it still did Eleven pretty darn dirty.