The creators of Stranger Things, brothers Matt and Ross Duffer, revealed in an interview with Josh Horvitz that the series nearly ended differently, though they ultimately abandoned that idea because it didn’t fit with other developments in the story.
Spoiler warning: the following contains plot details from the fifth season of Stranger Things.
Initially, the Duffers seriously entertained the idea of giving Eleven a truly happy ending: marrying Mike, living a peaceful life together, and seeing the government step away entirely — the Hawkins lab closed and the experiments stopped. They described this as a fully happy resolution for her character, but said they were unable to integrate that outcome into the narrative path the fifth season took.
The brothers explained that other story threads and events in the final season made that optimistic conclusion impossible to reconcile with the rest of the plot, so they chose a different direction for the show’s conclusion.
Stranger Things premiered in the summer of 2016 and over nearly ten years became one of Netflix’s flagship series. The show comprises five seasons totaling 42 episodes; the final episode was released on the night of January 1, 2026.