Some fans may not have loved the ending of Stranger Things—to the point of trying to manifest an additional episode to right all its perceived wrongs—but the fact that we’re still talking about it months later proves it made an emotional impact, for better or worse. David Harbour, who played Jim Hopper—the adoptive and often overprotective father of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown)—is now weighing in on the reaction to the finale.
In a recent interview with Variety, Harbour reiterated something he said a year ago about how he was more than ready for Stranger Things to finally be over: “At a certain point, you kind of run out of story. We had gone as far with these characters as we could, and we were starting to, in a subtle way, repeat beats.”
One beat that was new, however, was Eleven’s self-sacrifice after realizing she’d never be able to live the “normal” life she so desperately craved. While characters had died across Stranger Things before (RIP Barb and Eddie), the loss of Eleven was by far the show’s most significant—and Harbour doesn’t think the show could have ended any other way.
“Right from the very beginning of that series—we love this little girl, but you really can’t have a little girl in Hawkins, Indiana, with supernatural powers running around. She just cannot exist,” he said.
If all the other characters, including Jim Hopper, are going to move on from their Upside Down experiences, Eleven needs to completely depart. “Right from the beginning of the series—you gotta kill her.”
As Variety made sure to clarify, that means Harbour agrees with the general consensus that Eleven is indeed dead, not still out there somewhere chasing waterfalls. That is, he joked, “Until Netflix needs to raise their subscription rate. Then—ladies and gentlemen: Eleven, the new series!”
Read the full Harbour profile, which also digs into the controversies, both personal and professional, he’s faced in recent years, over at Variety.
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