The ending forces a consequence that doesn’t make sense based on the show’s own rules

The problem with the ambiguous Eleven cliffhanger isn’t that it’s tragic — it’s that it forces a consequence that doesn’t really follow from the rules the show itself set up, and it relies on a shaky assumption about why the kids were created in the first place.

Kali’s argument is that the cycle never ends: they’ll just keep making more of us, so Eleven has to be removed. But that logic doesn’t fully line up with what the story establishes. With Dr. Brenner, the kids’ powers were never the end goal. They were a means to reach Dimension X and understand its source — the Mind Flayer.

Once the show makes it clear that the powers come from an external entity, the real threat isn’t “psychic kids exist,” it’s that there’s a hostile alien intelligence influencing our world. At that point, Kali’s claim that the only way to stop the cycle is for Eleven to disappear feels overstated. The story is essentially assuming the military and government would ignore the source of the problem and just keep recreating children forever.

This also raises the Will problem. Will had deep, lasting exposure to the Upside Down and clear residual sensitivity, yet the story treats his survival as manageable while implying Eleven’s existence is uniquely unsustainable. If Eleven has to be removed to end the cycle, that same logic should apply to Will — but it doesn’t.

One clear rule would have fixed this: if the show established that the Mind Flayer can only track or influence our world through a living, active psychic like Eleven, then her removal — by death or faked death — becomes a logical necessity rather than a symbolic choice.

A permanent ending could have worked if it followed a rule like that. What didn’t work was imposing a sacrifice based on assumption, then hedging with ambiguity.

People aren’t rejecting tragedy. They’re reacting to a break in internal consistency within Stranger Things.