It’s been a few weeks since Stranger Things madness reached a fever pitch with the show’s divisive final episode. We can breathe again. Our social media feeds are reverting to their natural state of disturbing AI-generated slop, book recommendations (at least for me), googly-eyed girls performing face dances, and people eating absurdly spicy food. It feels good to know the “Conformity Gate” crowd lost the battle for a secret final episode, and we can go back to complaining about pronouns in the Masters of the Universe trailer (c’mon, people, get some real problems). While it’s obvious how I feel about all this noise, what does Millie Bobby Brown think of the Stranger Things finale, now that the smoke has cleared? Speaking with Tudum, Brown discussed Eleven’s ending and whether she’s satisfied with how things turned out for Netflix’s favorite Eggo-waffle-eating science experiment.
According to Brown, Eleven‘s final moments were “beautiful and cathartic,” mainly because it meant the character was no longer hunted or bearing the weight of the world.
“I just think it’s incredibly important that it all ends for her, and the suffering and the pain end,” Brown told Tudum.
Matt Duffer on the finale being a group effort
Stranger Things co-creator Matt Duffer also commented on the finale and how it brought all the characters together for the final fight. Finales are often a delicate balancing act, and Duffer expressed his contentment with the final confrontation with the show’s villain, Vecna, by saying, “Everyone contributes in some meaningful way…in that sense, it also feels very much like the climax of a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, where every character has a special skill, and they’re able to bring it to this final fight.”
What’s the “real” ending of Stranger Things?
Speaking about Eleven’s final fight with Vecna, Brown said it was thrilling to watch her character “harness” something inside herself that had remained untapped until that confrontation. “It’s very new to me because I think there’s finality in it,” Brown remarked.
Regarding Eleven’s fate after the final battle, that’s still up for debate. Even if social media posts have died down, fans continue to theorycraft online, suggesting fans could interpret the ending in multiple ways. Brown won’t say which ending is the “correct” one because it’s a matter of interpretation. So it goes.
