One Reveal In Stranger Things Finale Convinced Me Eleven's Ending Isn't As Happy As Some Fans Are Hoping

Major spoilers below for Stranger Things’ series finale, so if you haven’t yet watched via Netflix subscription, then Vecna must have made you click on this article, so be warned!

It’s been a full week since Stranger Things unleashed its final episode on viewers — not that everyone believes it was the real final episode — and fans are still up in arms about quite a few of the resolutions that played out. Or should I say the lack of resolutions? Specifically, a vast amount of post-episode commentary has revolved around whether Millie Bobby Brown’s Eleven actually sacrificed herself, as it was shown, or if Mike’s far more hopeful exit scenario is the true outcome.

Personally, for all that I’d love to optimistically hold onto the idea that Eleven is out there watching waterfalls and trying to adjust to life without the threat of soldiers and demogorgons, I don’t buy Mike’s endgame theory for a couple of reasons. The first is wholly practical, in that I don’t believe the dying Kali was capable of doing the things Mike speculated. (Unless she purposefully made her injuries look worse than they were to fool Hopper, which is a whole other rabbit hole.) I also don’t think time was on their side.

But even beyond those more technical plot mechanics, I think the finale offered another another argument against Eleven having survived in the form of a somewhat surprising character return. That’s right, I’m talking about Ted Wheeler.

Ted Wheeler's Fate Went Unconfirmed For More Than Half Of Season 5

Remember back in Episode 2 when Ted Wheeler brought a golf club to a demogorgon fight? He took quite a short-form whooping that left him seemingly knocking on death's door. That presumption was halfway strengthened by the fact that his fate was all but ignored for the next five episodes, despite all the attention placed on each of the other Wheeler family members. Sure, one could have assumed he was still alive just based on tno one else seeming sad about his death, but the way episodes jumped from one place to the next, it might have taken weeks for anyone to realize he wasn't around.

Okay, that's probably hyperbolic. But considering Mike was off trying to save the world with Will, Joyce and others, while Holly was trying to escape Henry's clutches, and Karen was in the hospital rehabbing her own injuries, Ted wasn't exactly on the front of anyone's minds. Sure, viewers were curious about his whereabouts, and wondered why he wasn't shown, but it's not like he was vital for taking the Mind Flayer down.

Killing Ted off either at that point (or later in the season) feasibly could have been a way for the Duffer brothers to up the kill count without taking out another main character. But at long last, the ol' fuddy-duddy showed up again in the 18-months-later flash-foward for the Hawkins High graduation. And after my initial surprise at seeing him again, I started to think that maybe his fate was the wholly connected flip-side of Eleven's fate, in terms of Mike's emotional state.

I Think Ted Survived So That Mike's Grief Wasn't TOO Overwhelming

Obviously the "real" reason Ted survived is because his monster-related injuries weren't fatal. But from a creative perspective, I think it's possible he lived on so that Mike didn't have to spend the bulk of that 18-month span in a downward spiral of mourning an immediate family member on top of mourning his first love. Nobody wants to think about a beloved young character going through that kind of trauma.

So instead, upon seeing that Ted is alive and well, one only has to assume that his grief was entirely focused on Eleven, which then allows for his optimistic outlook to have peak impact. If he'd been too much of an emotional wreck during graduation day, it might have made his D&D-tethered theory sound far more desperate and nutty than idealistic.

Which, in turn, is proof in my mind that Eleven is 100% dead, because Mike can't have it both ways. Even if it's not really about Mike, and is more about Eleven and Ted, Finn Wolfhard's character is the one whose perspective we're still seeing in the end, so it's all relative to him. And if neither Ted nor Eleven paid the final price for Vecna's reign of terror, then Mike wouldn't have evolved all that much as a character, sad as it is to say so bluntly. The tragedy will probably make him a better writer as well.

All that said, had the show revealed Ted to have died from his wounds, that actually would have made me far more willing to believe that Eleven lived on after the Upside Down was destroyed. Again, Mike as a total wreck would have been depressing, so that route still seems less than wonderful.

I think it's great that Mike is still holding out an olive branch of hope to himself, but I'm equally glad that it's seemingly a small enough branch that he won't immediately try to scour the globe looking for her. Because he's not gonna find her. Because she dead as hell, y'all. [Slams the coffin lid down.]