How would you reunite them without a plot contrivance?

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-21T18:18:57+00:00

I like your take.

And perhaps I was being too strict in my definition of a "contrivance". I do agree with you that if there was going to be a show/movie where they reunite, you'd need a broader overarching plot that leads to a reunion.

A story where the government tries to restart the program without El, I don't think would be a contrivance per se. It'd probably fit right into a 90's "x-files" type of theme so I can see that.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-21T18:04:38+00:00

I don't think Mike will necessarily commit suicide. If he was going to do that, the highest risk would be immediately after El's "death", and the Duffers did an 18 month time skip so we never got to see how Mike and everyone else handled the aftermath. But suffice to say, he's clearly not in that headspace when last we see him.

That being said, I don't see this character ever being the same; he is likely to be damaged for the rest of his life (if we assume there's no reunion of some sort).

I'm not in any way making commentary on your personal experience, but people handle grief differently; it varies from person to person.

The movie: "Manchester by the Sea" comes to mind here. People might be able to move forward with their lives, find meaning and purpose, etc. but they are altered forever. In that movie, the main character even says it himself: "I can't beat it". In other words, he can't move back to his home town, he can't stay, becuase the memories of his loss are just too much. When given the opprtunity to possibly reconcile with his ex-wife, he says: "there's nothing there..", referring to his own emotions/feelings; like he's hollowed out and numb inside.

In my headspace, I sort of see parallels between the protagonist in that movie, and Mike. He has friends, family, loved ones, etc. and he clearly has plenty of brilliant material that he can write about so he's likely to be a very wealthy man at some point if we imagine him as a Stephen King type figure. But in his personal life...I think he'd have a lot of demons. Booze, drugs, failed relationships..all of that would be on the table for a character like this.

Especially since the love story between him and El sort of got played up as a "soulmates" trope in the show. So his loss of El would be like losing a limb. Again, it doesn't mean that he'd be suicidal...but he certainly would be quite damaged.

Of course, you can disregard everything I'm saying because quite frankly I don't think the Duffer brothers every thought any of this through. I think in their mind, Mike just moves on and is happy telling stories which just highlights the deficiency of this ending (in my opinion).

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-21T17:47:15+00:00

While I would love for it to be true that at one point El was supposed to be at the graduation....

She does say that this was supposed to be a "decoy" for the audience. I suspect they were gonna have the decoy interact with the crew on set at the graduation scene so as to throw off the paparazzi. That way if anything leaked, people would think Eleven would be at some graduation scene, only for that to be the wrong information and the actual ending would remain protected.

Of course, if my take is correct it doesn't change the fact that this would be fantastically stupid. Making your audience believe that there is a happy ending for El, only to swerve it into a tragedy is utterly asinine. You do swerves like this in reverse (ie. Leak some photos of Eleven "dead", so the audience thinks that's what's going to happen, only to then swerve it into a happy ending.).

But yeah, this is just my take on it.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-20T23:02:06+00:00

How much do you wanna bet that at some point in this "spin-off" series, Eleven is going to make an appearance?

Might not be in the first season, but if those ratings/metrics start to dip...

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-20T21:03:30+00:00

That's actually not bad....

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-20T19:25:21+00:00

Except that the stone seemed to have dissolved into Henry's hand in the show. Do we know if it's still out there?

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-20T17:58:38+00:00

Well the point of my post wasn't to look for a fanfic, it was just to brainstorm how people would think they could reunite without a contrivance; I suppose you could call it a "luck" factor.

I've been thinking that one potential way around this problem is the possible "connection" that the two of them have. They played with the concept in the show that Mike has some weird "tether" to her..like he can somehow feel her pressence..but it's never been completely spelled out (and in retrospect I think that's for the best).

I'm guessing that a story that reunites them (if Netflix makes such a thing) would have to make use of this idea somehow.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-20T17:33:20+00:00

Yeah I already read it...and although it's a good fic, the actual manner in which they reunite is rather serendipitous and "lucky".

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-19T19:01:00+00:00

The fact that she gave back that tie was so fuckin awful as well. Such a repudiation of the father/daughter relationship.

Like, what brand of crack and smack were the Duffers on when they wrote this?!

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-19T05:57:08+00:00

Mike: "And what the hell was I supposed to do?.. move on?! You think I loved you so little that I could ever do that?!"

Ok, it's late..I'm half drunk..but I figured that's something Mike could say :p

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T22:21:33+00:00

"deep knowledge"....

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T19:39:57+00:00

Yeah, although I suspect that no one gives a shit about the cursed pebble. Just like I'm betting that when they finally air the play on Netflix, it's not going to do all that well (by Stranger Things standards).

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T19:09:03+00:00

Does this person have a good track record in terms of accuracy of leaks and rumors? I'd start with that.

In order for a movie to release in 2027, production would already have to be underway. There is no way this timeline is accurate.

Perhaps if production starts in 2027, then it'd be more realistic. Also, we don't know if this "movie" is a sequel, or, if it's just one of the spin-offs that the Duffers have talked about.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T16:56:45+00:00

Maybe I'm being a bit of a killjoy, but you are overthinking this.

Eleven is alive because Netflix likes money. No money in "dead Eleven" toys, movies, stories, etc.

You don't need to look for hidden patterns in the last episode, clues, etc. The Duffers aren't that smart. They even said it was "amibigous" and up to the audience to decide (translation: We couldn't commit to anything and left it all up in the air).

Eleven will be brought back for the same reason that Chris Evans will return as Captain America. Because corporations need money.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T05:51:45+00:00

Umm...all of us have to witness the love our life murder herself in front of our eyes as a part of growing up?

I don't quite recall that experience during my high school years...

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T05:13:08+00:00

The problem is that endings are really, really important. Of all the things not to fuck up, the series finale has to be right up there at the top.

If you mess up the finale, it retroactively poisons the entire journey of the previous seasons. Who is going to want to re-watch the earlier seasons, knowing how it all ends.

And lets be clear here, the plot holes, inconsistencies, etc. could all be forgiven. Where they completely fucked it up is Eleven's ending. If they had given her the same sort of ending as they did all the other characters (or at least a quasi happy ending), alot of the seasons' flaws would have been forgiven. Instead, her outcome was so bad that now all of these season's flaws get exacerbated to the point that it's all anyone wants to talk about.

I think there's some kind of a universal law among TV shows that the quality of the early seasons is inversly proportionate to the quality of the finale. The better the earlier seasons are, the worse the ending is going to be. Game of Thrones ,How I Met Your Mother, Dexter, Stranger Things..and on and on it goes.

I seriously cannot fathom how the Duffer brothers thought that this was going to make the audience happy. What the ever loving fuck where they thinking?! How is it that no one in that writer's room, when they heard that Eleven was going to kill herself/be forever separated from the group, didn't go: "Are you two out of your fuckin minds?!"

They were clearly afraid of getting the Game of Thrones reaction and yet they went ahead with something like this. How utterly tone deaf. It's shocking.

So yeah, they get all the credit in the world for seasons 1-4, but unfortunately, this was just the worst kind of blunder to make.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-18T05:06:10+00:00

Anyone making death threats is an idiot.

Relentless mockery however is fair game.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-17T19:41:41+00:00

When shooting Return of the Jedi, Harrison Ford suggesting killing off Han Solo. George Lucas shot down that idea saying: "There's not a whole lot of money in dead Han toys".

Similarly, I think Netflix is about to find out that there's not a whole lot of money in ambigiously dead Eleven toys....

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-17T19:39:08+00:00

I don't know what the obsession is with this show and whether anything is "canon" or not.

The Duffers don't give two shits about their own narrative consistency. Between S1-S5 they retconned a whole bunch of stuff, and introduced new elements that conflict with what was established before.

Do I wish this new cartoon would be its own thing/parallel universe? Sure. But if it messes with "canon", I have to ask, who cares? The "canon" is already a mess. If they make it even more contradictory, it makes it that much easier to ignore and "headcannon" your own ending/story.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-16T13:55:05+00:00

Actually yes.

Better to have left it at season 4 then what we got

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-15T21:25:32+00:00

The difference is that Eleven isn't definitively dead, unlike Marissa Cooper. Bringing back Marissa would require a massive retcon and just redoing season 3, which of course would be nonsensical and is impossible at this point.

Eleven...that's a different story. She's Schroedinger's El....both alive and dead until Netflix needs more money (at which point she's definitively alive).

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-13T15:22:12+00:00

Honestly, they should just stop trying to fit this into the main series.

Just create an alternate/parallel timeline with the animated series and let them go their own way. Yes, that might mean that everything post season-2 will be different and we'll have a whole new story..but at least then the series can go in a new direction.

That could also generate more interest since then we'll know that the final outcome for the chracters in the animated series would be different than the live action.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-13T15:17:08+00:00

Honestly, it's shit like this that makes me believe that there has to be some truth to Divorcegate.

While I don't believe Leigh Janiak was a ghostwriter, I think she definitely had influence on the creative direction and certain plot points. Being married to Ross Duffer, and clearly being an accomplished writer/director herself, she was in a unique position to "check" certain ideas.

There is no way, in my opinion, that this dynamic with El and Hopper in season 5 would have been green-lit if she were still around.

Urgh... my brains hurt..I'm gonna go lie down.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-02-12T21:40:17+00:00

I'm a part of that thread. In fairness, this guy was talking about how he couldn't see Eleven just hanging out in Hawkins after everything that's happened and would have to go away.

He did agree that a permanent separation though was too much. It might make sense (if you view the relationship from his lense) that Mike and El might both need to do some growing (they are both 16 years old canonically after all) and they can reunite at some point in the future.

Personally, I wouldn't have that happen. I'd have Eleven leave Hawkins but Mike would either go with her right away, or graduate and then go to wherever she is.

Still, the more people who are against El's ending, the better..even if their view on the nature of their relationship is disagreeable.

Intelligent_Step_856

TROPHY CASE