• Millie Bobby Brown posted her reaction to learning Eleven's fate in the series finale of Stranger Things.
  • She tearfully thanked fans for their support of her and the show throughout the years.
  • The Duffer brothers explained their reason for giving Eleven the fate they did in an interview after the series finale.

Stranger Things is officially over, and while fans on the online are (wrongly) speculating that the show has an alternate hidden ending, more episodes, or *ahem* plans to correct certain story lines in the finale, the cast is accepting the finality of it all, with Millie Bobby Brown getting super emotional seeing where her character Eleven ends up.

But! If you somehow have yet to watch season 5, episode 8 of Stranger Things yet—seriously, what are you doing, babes???—please know that MAJOR spoilers are ahead. You've been warned!

Millie shared a video to Instagram on January 9 that featured her watching the very end of the show, in which Mike tells Will, Dustin, Lucas and Max during a final game of Dungeons & Dragons that Eleven might still be alive and out there, embarking on a totally new adventure of her own in a far away land with three waterfalls. After a montage of El traversing the new environment, they all tearfully say “I believe.”

After watching the ending, Millie cried and said “thank you for all these years...this damn show” to the camera. “Watching THAT scene for the first time,” she captioned the Instagram post.

While there are some fans who do not accept El's fate as canon, the Duffer brothers confirmed that her character was never going to get a happy ending where she's able to remain with the rest of the group.

“There was never a version of the story where Eleven was hanging out with the gang at the end. For us and our writers, we didn’t want to take her powers away. She represents magic in a lot of ways and the magic of childhood. For our characters to move on and for the story of Hawkins and the Upside Down to come to a close, Eleven had to go away,” Ross Duffer told Netflix's Tudum. “We thought it would be beautiful if our characters continued to believe in that happier ending even if we didn’t give them a clear answer to whether that’s true or not.”

Matt added, “if Eleven is out there, the most that they could hope for is a belief that it’s true because they can’t be in contact with her. Everything falls apart if that were the case. So if that’s the narrative, this is really the best way to keep her alive. And it’s about Mike and everyone finding a way to move past what’s happened.”