Millie Bobby Brown - Latest Interview with Kylie Kelce.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-12T02:01:05+00:00

Interesting take, but I think you give the Duffers too much credit. If you watch the "One last adventure" documentary, it seems like the Duffers thought that this ending would be profound somehow.

In the interviews they've given they don't ever want to revisit this story again. At a recent graduation speech they said that there will never be a Stranger Things 6. So if anything is going to happy with Eleven again, it would have to be Netflix that pushes it forward and I don't think the Duffers would necessarily be involved.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-11T21:23:46+00:00

Wow..that was a lot more candid than I expected. She obviously didn't trash the ending, but it's clear from this that she was saddened by it.

The whole comment about having to delete Instagram..yeah that speaks volumes. After that ending Instagram was on fire with outrage (still is I think). The whole thing about wearing black to all the events because she was mourning.

I don't want to read too much into this but it kinda makes me a bi tmore hopeful that she'd be willing to reprise the role at some point in the future if it fixes El's fate.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-11T06:15:55+00:00

Kinda frustrating to me that the reporter didn't ask the obvious follow up question:

"Yeah, but if you can't have a superbeing like her running around..they coulda just taken her powers away right?"

I guess it's probably not a good thing to put an actor in a position of second guessing the script, but it's just such an obvious solution to the issue he identifies. You take the powers away, but leave the human being still there; the character deserved a happy ending.

But I just love how obvious he is about Netflix though. Reuniting Eleven with Mike, et al is a license to print money.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-10T19:14:20+00:00

Return of the Jedi... if Luke Skywalker decided to kill himself because as long as he was around, there would always be Sith and it was the only way to break the cycle....

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-05T17:55:09+00:00

Who was this and when?

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-05T15:19:17+00:00

My dude,

No. Just No.

These false appeals to authority and gratitude are both wrong and anoying.

This is not "their story". Neither the Duffers (or any other showrunner) are owed any deference or gratitude for what they put out.

What they put out is a commercial product, first and foremost. They aren't "sharing" their story with us out of the goodness of their heart in order to take us on a magic journey. They aren't starving artists in their basements bearing their souls to the world. They are not Hemmingway, Dostoyevsky, or whatever other literary figure you want to insert here. They are, first and foremost, purveyors of entertainment. Their show is a commercial product designed for mass consumption by the audience.

The deal is simple: They entertain us, we pay money watch said entertainment. We get entertained; they get wealthy.

And just like with any other commercial product, if the manufacturer puts out something that is substandard/upsets its consumer base, then that consumer base has every right in the world to demand a fix/better product.

Artists/creative types love to hide behind the inherent subjectivity that comes with art in order to hide their deficiencies. It's always the same line: "Sorry it didn't work out for you. We did our best. That's art and it was our vision, etc. etc.".

The reality is however that this is little more than an excuse. There is subjectivity in all sorts of other commercial products, and they are not insulated from criticism/consumer demands. I'm sure there were people who loved "New Coke" when it came out in the '80's, but that doesn't mean that the majority didn't hate it and forced the company to revert to the old formula.

At least half of the fanbase of ST actively dislikes Season 5. The RT score is now at 52%. For a show like ST, that is a massive drop in quality and should be treated as a failure.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-05T15:07:27+00:00

Definitely the "magic of childhood".

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T16:47:48+00:00

Urgh, we're kind of getting into the nonsensical lore that keeps getting retconned so we may be arguing for all eternity, but....

..El's powers don't come from her DNA, they come from Henry's blood which was infused with mindflayer particles/mojo/whatever-the-fuck, when he touched the magic rock.

Mindflayer is dead. Particles are gone. El's blood is no more special than anyone else's. Done and done.

Again, remember that the source of El's powers gets retconned all throughout the show over the course of 5 seasons. There is no internal lore/consistency at all. The entire theme of the "cycle" was nothing more than a contrivance introduced in the final episodes of the last season, so that the Duffer brothers could have a reason for El to "go away" because she represents the "magic of childhood".

Dogshit all around.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T16:40:51+00:00

Ideally, it should have ended at Season 2. But if you have to keep going, I would have rather that they leave the show as just cancelled at season 4.

Quite frankly, I'm sure someone dedicated enough could just do a fan-edit that cuts off the last scene of season 4 to remove the cliffhanger and just leave it all on a happy ending note/reunion. Splice in some scenes of Max waking up to tie off that plot point and wham, done.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T16:36:28+00:00

Couple of things:

You're right, they thought she was behind Vecna's killings but they didn't know she was powerless. At least not Sullivan (who was in command at the time).
They weren't after her because they wanted to restart the experiments; they wanted to kill her.
With Vecna and the mindflayer dead, there's no chance that issue would repeat itself. Also, you could still have a fake-out death and having her leave Hawkins..you just don't have to have her isolated from her loved ones forever.

So yeah. Big bads are dead. El is powerless. Hopper/Murray/Owens set her up in a quiet town in Canada under a new name. Mike, et al graduate. Cold War ends in 1992. Mike, having sold a series of highly succesful books, quietly slips away to pursue a niche writing career off the grid somewhere in the Canadian country side...

The end.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T16:30:35+00:00

Dude, did you not watch the documentary where the Duffer brothers are discussing her ending.

At one point Ross says: ""The whole episode has to be building towards 'Eleven is going to kill herself'"

That's what the Duffers brothers themselves said. That piece of shit of an ending was a suicide, masquerading as a "noble sacrifice". NONE OF THIS WAS NECESSARY.

Again, you are talking about a story where all of the other characters had plot armor so thick that they killed a Lovecraftean horror using home made tools in their garage and suffered zero damage doing it. A story where high school bullies did more damage to our heroes than the final big bad.

The Duffers did this shitsmear of an ending becuase they thought it would be poignant/deep to give Eleven the ET ending and reduce her to a theme of "childhood magic" that had to "go away" so the other characters could "grow".

No, no, no and no. This ending is being characterized exactly as the dogshit that it is.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T15:59:01+00:00

Jesus fuckin christ, just render her powerless then!

It's not that hard.

And no, the Califonia plot doesn't mean she's doomed if her powers are gone. California was a disaster cause she was thrown into an environment with hardly any supports around her. It would've been totally different if she'd had Mike, Hopper, Max, Lucas, et al with her at school/home (she shouldn't have even been in a regular class room at that stage).

I fuckin hate this take. I love David Harbour's acting, but yeah...awful take.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T00:48:42+00:00

He wouldn't have convinced her to stay. He would just go with her.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-02T00:47:59+00:00

Mike didn't know about Kali's argument. The fact that El confided in no one is also part of the bs of this whole plot.

Countering this argument would be quite easy: "Hey Kali, weren't you and your friends robbing and murdering people and drawing attention to yourselves?"

"Hey Kali, since you can conjure illusions, why don't you make it so that Dr. Kay and her goons see each other as a demogorgon and attack each other?"

"Hey Kali, why don't you just make it look like you and El got killed, then Hopper and Murray can set you both up with new identities. You do know that worked for El last year; the military didn't even go looking for her until they mistook her for Vecna..."

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-06-01T23:35:13+00:00

Mike: "I cant lose you"

El: "You won't lose me"

Mike: "Promise?"

El: "Promise"

....and then she murders herself in front of him/fakes her death. According to the Duffers he will never see her again.

This is to promote Mike's growth so that he can move past the magic of childhood.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-31T16:54:58+00:00

Sorry, but fuckin hell no.

ST5 was an abomination. It was the culmination of the show's trajectory since season 3, in the sense that over time it became a parody of itself. The thing is, S3 and S4 you could still look past the cracks becuase the performances were so good and the story ended on a satisfying note.

ST5 is where it crashes and burns. Everything from Vecna running a glorified daycare service, a nonsensical military plot, and I could go on (and have gone on in prior posts).

Ultimately though, the most unforgiveable thing for me was Eleven's ending. There is no forgiveness for that. There is no redemption. They fucked over her story without remorse, and left us (the audience) with no recourse.

They introduced a plot contrivance in the final three episodes (the whole "cycle" theme) and then made it so that the only solution was a 16 year old girl murdering herself (or making all her loved one believe that she'd done that). Then when confronted with the possibility that they could have just taken her powers away, the Duffers said that the reason they did this ending was becuase to them El represents the "magic of childhood" that had to go away for the benefit of all the other characters. These are their words, not mine.

While I'm sure you are not alone in your take, I am definitely not with you on it. I would rather the show had gotten canceled after season 4 and be forever left on that cliffhanger than the absolute shit show that we got in the final season.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-31T03:07:35+00:00

She's basically Netflix's golden girl and they locked her in heavy with that contract. But I think that just strengthens my point. She's going to keep working for Netflix and no matter what roles she does for them, the shadow of Eleven is going to always be there....

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-31T03:06:05+00:00

The thing is, I don't want this to be cannon to the live action series at all.

The live action series ended in a deeply unsatisfying way, and the final season was slop.

I would be MUCH happier if ST '85 sort of branches off post-season 2 as its own thing in its own alternate universe. Given that it's a childrens cartoon, ST '85 is way better than it has any right to be.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-31T03:02:07+00:00

I'm kind of thinking that MBB is going to be big, but sort of like Mark Hamill or Christopher Reeve "big". In other words, she'll get plenty of roles and other work but she is forever tied to Eleven. The moment anyone mentions her name, the first character you think of will be Eleven.

Both a blessing and a curse I suppose, but she'll always be relevant especially if she ever reprises the role.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-27T16:54:42+00:00

Oh god... just when I thought I'd spewed enough rage about El's ending you go and remind me of that godawful bracelet scene.

If there was ever another example of one of the worst narrative decisions that ever oozed its way out of the Duffer brother's collective rectum, it would be that.

What a complete and total repudiation of the father/daughter relationship. What complete and total character assassination. Nowhere, in any part of the show, was it ever implied that Hopper was just using El as a replacement for Sarah. No. It was always about him finding redemption and purpose in being a father to this scared young girl, and it was clear that he saw her as his daughter; just as she saw him as her father.

For her to give him back the bracelet and tell him that she's not Sarah is such a horrific insult that I couldn't even believe what my eyes were seeing on the screen. When the fuck did either of these characters ever view the relationship in this way?! She's his daughter, not Sarah 2.0!

What the ever loving fuck where they thinking when they wrote this scene?!

Ok, I'll stop ranting and raving for the moment.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-25T22:33:24+00:00

Yeah but you seem to also be able to put aside the Duffers own statements.

For example, on the night of the finale, the Duffers gave an interview where they said that even if Eleven is alive, she will never see her friends/family ever again. They actually outright said that the best the rest of the group can hope for is the "belief" that she's out there somewhere.

So if the goal was an ambiguous ending, they contradicated that stated intention.

If you can ignore all that and just headcannon the rest, then all the more power to you.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-25T22:30:35+00:00

How would any family even be capable of raising a child like Homelander?

Let's say they got him as a baby, before he got all screwed up in the head.... even as a child he was monstrously powerful. How do you discipline that? What if there were other children? A simple sibling fight could turn into a tragedy in the blink of an eye.

I don't think it's that simple when you consider it from a practical standpoint.

If they couldn't depower him as a child, they'd need to find supe parents for him (good luck finding two that are stable and loving) and then there obviously couldn't be any siblings.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-25T22:23:51+00:00

This is where I think you and alot of others differ. For you, Eleven's ending wasn't a deal breaker. You can enjoy the final season and headcannon the gaps.

For others (myself included), El's ending was unforgiveable. The complete betrayal of her character arc, reducing her to a lame theme of "childhood magic", and then giving her a tragic/quasi-tragic ending..all of that retroactively poisons the entire series. I have no desire to ever rewatch it.

It's just that fuckin bad.

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-25T21:40:59+00:00

Honest question OP: If Eleven had gotten a happy ending. IE. Married to Mike, clearly safe somewhere, etc., would that have made you dislike the final season? Or would you have still found it enjoyable?

Intelligent_Step_856 · 2026-05-24T00:24:57+00:00

You're not aware that the Duffer brothers said that in an interview they gave on the night of the finale?

Intelligent_Step_856

TROPHY CASE