Stranger Things has been an unrequited success story for Netflix. The show has captivated audiences since it first premiered in 2016 and the third season, released earlier this year, broke multiple records for the streamer and became one of the most watched programs on the platform.
Audiences are now more than eager to check out more of the Hawkins-set stories, especially given how the most recent finale ended. Who is “the American” the Russians have? Is the portal to the Upside Down really closed now? And was Hopper really just left for dead underneath the Starcourt mall are some of the many questions fans have going into the next run but one of the most pressing involves Eleven.
The season 3 closer not only saw her apparently lose her powers fighting against the beasts from the Upside Down, but be taken in by Joyce Byers, after Hopper’s death and/or disappearance. Subsequently, she moved out of town with the Byers family and ever since that bittersweet moment, fans have been asking what’s to become of her? How will she get added back into the mix and will she ever get her powers back?
Certainly, most, if not all of these questions will be answered when season 4 eventually arrives, but Millie Bobby Brown, the actress behind the role, has some hopes of her own for Eleven’s storyline in the next go round. Speaking with Elle magazine, she said:
I hope she finds who she is, without a boy, a male influence in her life. There’s Mike and Papa and Hopper and all the boys really. Even without Max, she needs to find herself by herself. Everyone needs that moment in life to sit there and think, ‘Who am I as a person, who am I without everyone around me? How can I really love myself?’ I don’t know if she knows how to do that yet. So, I would like an arc for Eleven to learn how to love herself and learn who she is, which is hard in the circumstances she’s in. I think that she needs a little self journey.
All things are pointing to Eleven having a very self-revelatory story in the upcoming season of Stranger Things. Either she’ll have to figure out how to adjust to not having powers and just living a normal life, and inevitably getting sucked back into the Upside Down shenanigans but facing them sans supernatural abilities. Or, she’ll go on a quest to get her powers back, probably because of the aforementioned shenanigans. Whatever the case, she’ll have to do it alone, which could be the show’s most poignant plotline yet.