In the Stranger Things Season 5/series finale, Vecna is finally vanquished, but our heroes are robbed of a happy ending when Dr. Kay and the military show up to take Eleven into custody.
She enters Mike's mind and explains that she's decided to end her life, as it's the only way to their experiments and the danger her existence poses for the ones she loves. Following an emotional farewell, El stands at the portal to the Upside Down and is wiped away, along with the Upside Down itself, when Hopper's C-4 goes off.
18 months later, Mike points out that when Eleven died, the military had been using the machines meant to cripple her. Instead, she was standing tall, leading him to believe that moments before her "dying," Kali must have conjured the illusion of Eleven so the real El could escape and find peace.
It's an ambiguous ending, and one that, upon closer inspection, does seem to indicate that Eleven died. Understandably, many fans are unhappy about the whole thing, prompting "Conformity Gate" conspiracy theories about an upcoming secret episode featuring Stranger Things' "real" ending (there's nothing to suggest that's happening).
One Last Adventure: The Making of Stranger Things 5 arrived on Netflix yesterday, and as we first reported on SFFGazette.com, an eagle-eyed fan has spotted proof that the finale once played out quite a bit differently.
It turns out Hopper was supposed to be made aware of El's plan to fake her death, and they were supposed to have a "Lost in Translation moment" (a reference to a scene in the 2003 movie that sees Bob and Charlotte wordlessly embrace before going their separate ways). However, Eleven was also going to "[say] goodbye to everyone in [a] happy memory."
This board spotted in Stranger Things 5's writers' room also confirms that, "El is gone (not dead)." However, this is an earlier, alternate ending for the series and is in no way canon. The finale started shooting without a finished script, and somewhere along the line, the decision was made to head down a different route.
Many fans have since pointed out that there were telltale signs of reshoots during the second half of the episode, suggesting that El's ambiguous fate and the epilogue were added relatively late in the process.
"I don’t know if we want to say," Stranger Things co-creator Ross Duffer previously said of how to interpret the show's ending. "Obviously, we’ve had these conversations with Millie too, and we all have our own interpretations. I worry if I say it, it might take away. We really want the audience to take from it what they want."
Matt Duffer added, "You can’t write with a sense of ambiguity. You’re writing from a specific point of view, because the character doesn’t know; Max [Sadie Sink] doesn’t know, right? The characters can’t know and the audience can’t know because then it puts Eleven in danger and her sacrifice was for nothing. So there’s a point in not knowing. The boys obviously choose to believe."
Stranger Things Season 5 is now streaming on Netflix in its entirety.