Sadie Sink’s Theory on Eleven’s Fate After the ‘Stranger Things’ Finale

By Source / Published on Wednesday, 07 Jan 2026 04:28 AM / No Comments / 14 views

“Stranger Things” released its highly anticipated series finale on New Year’s Eve, and people can’t stop talking about what happened to Eleven.

Sadie Sink, who portrays Max, was asked about the fate of Millie Bobby Brown’s supernatural character during an interview on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.”

“I think she’s dead,” Sink told Jimmy Fallon as the audience let out an audible reaction. “Yeah. Is that like a hot take or something?”

In the fifth season’s eighth and final episode, the Hawkins group of ragtag teens, along with Joyce Byers and Hopper, among others, helped defeat Vecna once and for all.

However, to make sure that the destructive otherworld of the Upside Down was destroyed for good, Eleven sacrificed herself.

In the "Stranger Things" finale, Eleven sacrifices herself. — In the “Stranger Things” finale, Eleven sacrifices herself.COURTESY OF NETFLIX / Courtesy of Netflix/Netflix © 2025

However, in one of the ending scenes, the teens are playing Dungeons when Mike (Finn Wolfhard) shares his theory on what happened to Eleven. He believes that his girlfriend Eleven and her sister, Kali, used their powers to hide Eleven and create an illusion that she was killed by the detonated bomb that destroyed the Upside Down.

Mike says that “no one will ever know” where Eleven went but he’d “like to imagine she’s in a beautiful land.”

Viewers then see a fresh-faced Eleven hiking through a lush mountainous landscape and looking out at waterfalls.

Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven at the end of "Stranger Things" Season 5. — Millie Bobby Brown as Eleven at the end of “Stranger Things” Season 5. COURTESY OF NETFLIX / COURTESY OF NETFLIX © 2025

When Mike’s friends question if that is true, he says that he chooses to believe it is. He thinks Eleven is alive but can never tell anyone for fear of risking all their lives.

“I think, like, Mike’s story is like just one last story and… then they say goodbye to childhood,” Sink told Fallon about her theory. “But that’s just one final tale and that’s it.”

Adding, “I think it’s just, like, a coping thing.”

Sink said that she feels that this theory makes the ending “stronger.”

Before the finale, creators Matt and Ross Duffer told TODAY.com that a death would be happening, calling it an “emotional ending to the show.”

“I want people to brace themselves as they go into the finale,” Ross Duffer said, promising that it wasn’t “a ‘Red Wedding’ situation, like from ‘Game of Thrones.’ We’re not going to wipe out eight of our characters.”

Matt Duffer added that any deaths that happened wouldn’t be “for shock value.”

The brothers, however, did reveal that they do know what did happen to Eleven — but they’ll never tell.

In an interview with Josh Horowitz shared on Jan. 4, they said that they left the ending “ambiguous for a reason.”

“Ross and I know and we were just talking to Millie about it,” Matt Duffer said. “But I think it takes away the power of the ending if you tell people what you were thinking as you were writing it.”⁠

He shared that Brown does know what happened to her character, but “she’s not going to tell you, either. Don’t waste your time.”

Matt Duffer added, “Millie swore herself to secrecy.”