Stranger Things Finale: Who Dies in the Final Battle?

Warning: This story contains spoilers for Stranger Things season 5, Volume 3.

After nearly 10 years, Stranger Things has officially come to an end.

The Netflix hit dropped its third installment of season 5 on Dec. 31 with a two-hour finale filled with epic fights, devastating deaths and satisfying resolutions for its main cast. The first two volumes of the season set the stage for the crew to take on one last battle to stop Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) from merging the Abyss into the Hawkins.

At the end of Volume 2, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) agrees to a plan devised by her sister, Eight a.k.a Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) that the only way to really end it, is to vanish into the Upside Down when it’s destroyed. That’s the only way to ensure the military can’t create more children with their powers to use for evil.

So did Eleven agree to Eight’s plan? And did the rest of the crew including Will (Noah Schnapp), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Steve (Joe Keery), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Hopper (David Harbour), Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Joyce (Winona Ryder), Robin (Maya Hawke), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink), survive the battle against Vecna?

Did Steve Die?

The first near-death experience of Volume 3 occurred as the radio tower ruptured the Abyss as the worlds started colliding. As the tower shifted, Steve slid down the landing and was mid-fall when all of a sudden, Jonathan grabbed his hand and dragged him back up. “S— I thought you were toast,” Dustin tells Steve.

Later, as they’re walking through the Abyss after they cross into it from the radio tower, Steve tells Jonathan: “I thought I was a goner back there, I owe you one.”

“Just because I don’t like you, doesn’t mean I want you dead,” Jonathan says. “And I have a feeling we’ll need you up here.”

Steve says he doesn’t blame him for not liking him: “I can be a real prick sometimes.” 

Did Hopper Die?

Hopper helped get Eleven to the lab in the Upside Down and inside the water tank she needs to enter Vecna’s mind. While there, he gets a visit from Vecna who tricks him, and makes Hopper disrupt Eleven’s journey into Vecna’s mind.

As he’s trying to devise a new plan with Eleven, the military arrives to capture her. As they fight off the soldiers, Hopper hides Eleven. He goes back to save Eight, but they captured her. He kills off guards to try to get to her, but Lieutenant Robert Akers (Alex Breaux) knocks Hopper out.

Akers demands to know where Eleven is, but neither Eight nor Hopper will tell him. He’s about to shoot Eight just as Murray (Brett Gelman) detonates a bomb. In the distraction, Eleven kills the guards and makes Akers kill himself with his own gun via her powers. Despite her best attempts to save them, Kali was shot in her stomach.

“Don’t cry, Jane,” she tells Eleven just before she dies. “My story was always going to end here.”

Did Eleven Die?

Before Eleven entered the tank to go into Vecna’s mind to stop him from merging worlds, Hopper made her promise him they would make it out alive.

Hopper first thought he shot and killed Eleven when Vecna was messing with his mind. While Vecna was taunting Hopper, he shot at the water tank, and Hopper envisioned that the bullets broke through the glass and killed Eleven. That makes him pull her out of it and completes Vecna’s mission to get her out of his mind.

In their final hear-to-heart, Eleven tells Hopper he needs to believe in her.

“When I was a kid, and you found me in the woods, I was scared,” she began. “Really scared. I didn’t understand the world, I didn’t understand people. You took me in, raised me, protected me. You became my dad. But I’m not a kid anymore. And I’m not Sara. She didn’t have a choice to make, but I do. And I need you to trust me to make the right choice. I need you to believe in me.”

After defeating Vecna, they all make it safely out of the Abyss but as they exit the Upside Down, the military stops their vehicles and apprehends everyone. Eleven escaped, and appeared at the entrance of the Upside Down, just as the explosives were just about to destroy it.

She pulls Mike into her mind to tell him, “None of this will ever end, not if I’m still here.”

She continues, “I need you to talk to the others. I need you to thank them for me, for being so kind to me, and teaching me what it means to be a friend. Mike, I need you to help them understand my choice.”

He argues, saying he doesn’t understand. “I know, but you will,” she tells him. “One day you will. You understand me. You always have, from the day we met. You’ve seen me. The real me. I will always be with you. I love you.”

They share a final kiss before he is back in his mind, held back by the military and screaming for her to come back. She disappears as the Upside Down is destroyed.

Did Eleven Actually Survive the Destruction of the Upside Down?

Later, when the episode jumps to the kids’ graduation, 18 months later, the core group (Mike, Dustin, Lucas, Will and Max) are downstairs at Mike’s house playing Dungeons & Dragons. As Mike is narrating the game, he makes the others question whether Eleven could actually still be alive.

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He explains that Eleven and Eight devised a plan to make everyone believe Eleven was dead, to trick the military. Eight “cast a spell from far away, a spell of invisibility” and the person they saw die was an “illusion.” Mike says he wants to imagine Eleven disappeared to a “land somewhere far away.”

The show cuts to Eleven walking up a mountain overlooking three waterfalls, where she finds “peace and happiness,” Mike says. When Max and Lucas ask if it’s true, Mike says we don’t know if that’s true, but “I chose to believe that it is.”

According to Netflix, the creators, Mike and Ross Duffer, left the ending “up to viewers to decide what they think happens to Eleven.”

Ross explained for her friends though, “she lives on in their hearts, whether that’s real or not.”

All three volumes of Stranger Things season 5 are streaming now on Netflix.