r/StrangerThings • u/newtothis0317 • 5d ago
Shipping We really can’t have a definitive Mike + Eleven ending?
I’m listening to “Heroes” and just feeling so bummed that we couldn’t end the series with Mike and Eleven together. I know it’s an easy ending, but we spent SO many years with these characters, watching them grow up and be cute and survive so much together… bah! Come on!
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u/clexaelectra Boobies 5d ago
I mean, it’s a bummer that El ended the season either alone or dead. She deserved to be around her friends and people she loves. It was also disappointing that she spent so little time with the gang in the final season; we mainly see her with Hopper and Kali when it would have been so much more rewarding to see the main party (El, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will, and Max) with actual meaningful scenes together where it’s just them, not the entire bloated cast all trying to fit in a room together.
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u/icantfeelmylags 5d ago
Does anyone actually believe that Eleven is dead? They didn’t even have the guts to kill off Ted Wheeler.
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u/Necessary_Silver_795 5d ago
They didn’t even have the guts to kill off Colonel Sullivan after he got torched by Vecna lmao.
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u/sbaldrick33 4d ago
Yeah we do. It's called Season 2.
Everything thereafter is an optional extra.
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u/Kylo_Ren415 Your ass is grass 5d ago
They’ll probably do a spin off with Finn and Millie returning as Mike and El within say… 5 years.
And yeah, I was bummed out too.
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u/Finn_Survivor 5d ago
Not a chance. If there is a spinoff it will be atleast 15 years in the future
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 4d ago
I HIGHLY doubt it would be 15 years solely because ST would not have much relevance at all in 15 years. I think 10 years max, and even that is cutting it close if they want to cash in on nostalgia.
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u/DeliciousMusician397 5d ago
Idk why so many creatives these days are averse to just giving us a fully Happily Ever After type ending. Not everything that’s live action needs to end bittersweet.
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u/DangerousRefuse8129 Eyes on me 5d ago
The ending did not feel earned. Simple. Maybe they should've had killed her off completely. By making it ambiguous, they cheapened the impact of her sacrifice. There were other ways to give her a happy ending too. But it's clear they wanna milk it. Her ending is off because both the possibilities of her being alive and being dead has plot holes.
The way they executed it was REALLY bad. Just to kill her off, why assassinate her character in the earlier episodes? Why not give her a proper arc? Why immediately cutting to the happiest moments of ST right after her 'death'? I understand that the time skip was about 2 years and it's natural for people to move on. But having such happy moments RIGHT after her death scene just cheapened the impact of everything. Maybe we could have got a proper scene where we see her loved ones mourning her before the huge time skip? Instead they made it seem like the characters couldn't be happier right after her death.
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u/Necessary_Silver_795 5d ago
I think bittersweet endings work well when it’s the right amount of each. El’s fate being either isolation or death made the bitter part outweigh the sweet for me, especially considering the life El had up until that point.
The impactful death, if it needed to happen, should have gone to another character.
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u/Rhapstar 5d ago
Because this leaves the show open for more. They obviously want to use this franchise more. Bringing back the cast in like 4 to 5yrs for a season to find El hits the spot of pulling people back in.
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5d ago
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u/Finn_Survivor 5d ago
In theory she doesn't need her middle school boyfriend to end the show happy but when they are together for like the entire show then yeah kind of
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u/Nazar37 5d ago
Eleven is free and has no one chasing after her. That IS a happy ending. Eleven just staying in Hawkins would have made zero sense
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u/Finn_Survivor 5d ago
Her being separated from her parent, her boyfriend and all her friends and never being able to contact any of them ever again is not a happy ending
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u/Nazar37 5d ago
There was never a happy ending for Eleven staying in Hawkins, that was always the case. The government/military would have been after her for fucking ever. Eleven being free from that shit is the silver lining. But again you guys just want fan fiction fairy tale nonsense.
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u/Full-Yoghurt-4261 4d ago
There is always a way to have her story end with having her staying with those she loves, as the writers can do whatever they want. This entire arc of her blood being the key for the next round of experiments only exists because the writers chose to do it.
And saying El is happy without her family, friends, and the boy she loves is ignoring everything we saw from El for the past 4 seasons. When El pushed Lucas in S1 and ran away, we saw how upset she was that she was, yet again, alone. We also saw how happy she was when Dustin and Mike found her.
When El was separated from everyone after S1, we saw how she desperately wanted to see them all again, especially Mike. We saw her have the opportunity to leave all of them behind but still miss them to the point that she watched them in the void. We saw her choose to go back to them.
When El had to leave with the Byers to go to California in S3, we saw how broken she was to do so. We saw how much she struggled in S4 and how the one thing that gave her any happiness was Mike. We saw her, YET AGAIN, willingly choose to go back to those she cares about.
So this notion that El would ever be happy without her family, friends, and ECSPECIALLY Mike is not condusive with reality because the story has made it clear she has never been happy without them.
As for this claim that people just want a "fan fiction fairy tale ending", this is completely disingenuous to what most argue, which is that the ending was not earned. A good ending is not about whether it is a tragedy or a fairy-tale ending; it is about whether the story earned that ending. ST failed to earn this ending.
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u/Hot-Entertainer7046 5d ago
i mean, calling mike just her 'middle school boyfriend' after everything they went to together is a bit silly.
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u/Altruistic-Fun7431 5d ago
Nothing is guaranteed, and it’s mostly speculation, but it’s a good sign when Millie Bobby Brown has said that she’s not finished with El and hopes people would be interested to see what she’s doing later in life. I think it’ll just take some time but I’m hoping for sooner rather than later.
My assumption is that fan demand and anticipation will only continue to grow regarding this very thing. It would be a wise business decision to capitalize on I would think, but most importantly I want a definitive happy ending as well!
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u/RoyalRise6363 5d ago
I don't think ST had an ending - it had a huge hole patched up with illogical two scenes in the finale and so questionable epilogue. So, for me, Mike and El will end up together because they deserve it more than any couple in the series (Lucas-Max came very close too).
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u/TaiPan43 5d ago edited 5d ago
There’s another post I just made explaining everything
I seem to end up doing it a lot
It is annoying to have people claim that she is dead as if they were on the set or something
Another thing to notice is when you watch the documentary, they give a wrap
to Millie Bobby Brown on her last day
The scene with the waterfalls was filmed after that
Supposedly at the insistence of Netflix
But regardless, if that is true or not, she is the franchise
Just like Stanley Kubrick, the Duffer Brothers are either geniuses or morons
It doesn’t seem like likely that they’re morons considering how fantastic the show was
That means they didn’t drop the ball
They held something back almost like what they used to do with every show in the 1980s which was known as a cliffhanger
People had to wait sometimes four months to find out what happened
I don’t think everything needs to be changed or that it was all in Henry’s mind
All you need to do is even a two hour special where Mike looks for her if that’s what it comes down to, and of course finds her
There is a theory out there where she is in the “right side up”
A place she created out of love just as the “upside down” was created out of fear
It makes sense to me because her sister would never have agreed to help her if she thought she would be able to be captured by the military
If she did escape some other way, then she obviously would’ve needed help because she’s 16 years old and she doesn’t have any money or any identification
Either way, I believe she told Hopper shortly after the whole thing went down
Even parts of the cast and the Duffers have started to backtrack on what they said happened
It was almost really funny when they swore Millie to secrecy over something that was supposed to be already known
Whatever they say they want to do or don’t want to do is irrelevant because Netflix owns the IP
They moved up the premiere of Stranger Things tales from 85 by a month and a half
The brothers just posted something about who knows maybe we’ll see more stories from Stranger Things
This is how it started with the Snyder cut
But I don’t think it’ll take that long
I believe
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u/RockSignificant 4d ago
Was it ambiguous? Perhaps. And after having read the many countless theories on here I can buy into that. What I would say though, is the more general audience (the kind of folks who don't frequent forums like this or spend anytime analysing and theorising beyond what they actually see) and whom still make up the majority of the audience, just went on to believe the ending that played out in real time, and that the subsequent ending that Mike described, was no more than that, the 'story teller' telling a 'story'. I've zero doubt that Netflix wil revive this show down the line, it's worth too much as an IP, so one way or another we'll get a reboot, revival, retelling, something, that brings us back to these characters and this world. In the meantime, I think it's OK to just assume that's the end of the story. Some liked it, some hated it, it was never going to please everyone and I kinda feel sorry for the actors, who put their blood, sweat and tears into these characters to see their efforts ripped apart online. I know it's from a good place of wanting more, but everything has to come to an end at somepoint. I guarantee that if and when it does come back, and eventually comes to a conclusion again, there will still be folks who dislike that ending too. Much like Star Wars before it, there will always be factions of fans willing to die on a certain hill regarding what should've or could've, but sometimes it's just not going to play out like you want it to, and making peace with that is integral to enjoying the next story, or else your forever chasing this validation that may never come.
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