The Duffer Brothers have confirmed one of the lingering mysteries about the conclusion of Stranger Things Season 5. Stranger Things wrapped up its nine-and-a-half-year run at the end of 2025, with creators Matt and Ross Duffer tying a bow on most of the storylines. In many ways, Stranger Things is seen by most people as Netflix's crowning achievement so far, pulling in millions of eyes around the world and creating a sustaining franchise. Now, more than five months after the credits rolled, the Duffers have clarified what many fans long suspected about one character's future.
Some might be assuming this could be another update on the fate of Millie Bobby Brown's Eleven, whose left-to-debate ending may not have the finality fans were looking for.
However, while that conversation is ongoing, this particular confirmation is about an entirely different character.
The Duffer Brothers were recently asked about whether the final moments of the show were ever intended to set up a continuation for Holly Wheeler (Nell Fisher).
To recap, after defeating Vecna in the finale, the core group, Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Max (Sadie Sink), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Will (Noah Schnapp), gather one last time in the Wheelers' basement for a final Dungeons & Dragons campaign. But as Mike leaves one last time, Holly and her own group of friends come racing downstairs, a new generation, seemingly starting their own story.
The show's ending led to the viral fan theory dubbed "Conformity Gate," which speculated that the epilogue audiences saw was an illusion made by Vecna, and that a real secret Episode 9 would drop on January 7th. This, of course, never happened.
On a recent episode of Josh Horowitz's Happy, Sad, Confused podcast, the Duffers were asked directly about a proper Stranger Things continuation.
Horowitz posed a hypothetical: what if a great filmmaker, like Jordan Peele, came calling with a vision for Holly and her friends in Hawkins? Matt replied first, acknowledging if Peele were to call, but admitting that the scene simply "wasn't intended for that:"
"Well, if Jordan Peele called... That's not happening, though. No, I don't think so. No, because that that also wasn't intended for that, right? That was not meant for that. By the time that [would be] written, Nell [Fisher] would be like 17. So no, it wasn't meant for that."
He also added that they only had this vision for Stranger Things, and don't intend to continue the current arcs, though, if they "had another good idea, [they] would do it."
"I mean, we have this one idea. We've had one idea for what we could do with Stranger Things and we had it seven years ago. So, that's what we're trying to do now. If we had another good idea, we would do it."
Ross backed his brother up with a more conceptual argument for why a Holly-led spinoff would inevitably collapse into just being more Stranger Things:
"I mean, if Holly starts to [see] this weird stuff, she's just going to call her brother and then it's like we're just making Stranger Things again."
At the end of the day, as Ross puts it, the final scene was more about Mike "remembering back to his childhood, and saying goodbye to it:"
So, I think for us, yeah, that was really about sort of the passing of the torch, and him remembering back to his childhood, and saying goodbye to it than it was... It's not obviously setting anything up for a sequel."
The Stranger Things creators were also asked whether anything had been cut from the finale's structure, specifically, whether there were characters or moments from that 18-month time jump epilogue that didn't make it to the final cut.
Matt's answer revealed just how much creative weight the brothers placed on getting that closing chapter right, in fact, the epilogue was the first thing they worked on, "We spent a long time on that and I don't think we cut anything:"
"I don't think so… Because, I think it was very important… That coda was very important to us. I remember when we started working on Season 5, [the epilogue] was where we started. So, we spent a long time on that and I don't think we cut anything."
Ross echoed his brother, knowing they "couldn't do a 2-hour wrap-up coda," so they fit every moment they wanted to into those closing moments with the characters:
"No, because it was really just making sure, though every moment in there… because we knew we couldn't do a 2-hour wrap-up coda. So, every moment actually becomes very precious there that we wanted to be spending time with the characters that we've spent all these seasons with, and time with, and we just wanted to make sure to do right by them in each of those scenes. So, we were very careful as we wrote that. I think exactly as it was outlined is how it was ultimately written."
Finally, to try to put to bed all the speculation, the Duffers touched on how long they knew Eleven would sacrifice herself in the end. Horowitz asked them directly when they first made that decision, and when they told Millie Bobby Brown.
Ross was candid that her ending had been planned for "many years," even if the exact timeline of telling Millie was harder to pinpoint:
"I can't remember when we told Millie. Do you remember Matt? This ending has been then planned though for many years."
Remarking on when the conclusion of Season 5 was being discussed, Matt applauded Brown's emotional intelligence, as she was able to infer that Eleven would die, and "she just started to cry:"
"I mean, Millie is incredible in the sense that even by like... she's the most emotionally intelligent person I know. So, she can pick up on the tiniest clues, so she senses that you're writing something before you've even written it. So, she knows what we're thinking, and she had a sense of what was coming, and I didn't even say anything.
She's like, 'She's going to die. She's going to die.' I was like, 'No, I'm not saying that.' And then, she just started to cry. So, she's very emotionally sensitive. She's very, very connected to El."
Matt went on to explain that no one, including Brown, really knew the fully extent of the ending "until the table read." The writer explained they wanted to keep it a secret so that they could "make sure that worked" when the cast read it out loud for the first time together:
"But it's hard to know exactly the moment that we told her. She didn't know 'till, for sure, in terms of what happened to her until the table read, at least in terms of what's presented as she's reading it. No one knew really.
We tried as much as possible withhold as much as we could from them before that table read because we just wanted to see how it, you know, played in real time in front of them all and make sure that worked."
Part of the ambiguity of Eleven's ending is that fans do see her alive and well, but most fans will interpret that as Mike's imagination. However, it does technically leave room for future storytelling, if the Duffer ever wanted (or were paid enough) to create more episodes.
The Future of Stranger Things
A fact that may dismay some long-time fans: the next chapter of Stranger Things doesn't have much, or anything, to do with the original cast.
Even Stranger Things: Tales From '85, a new animated series set between Seasons 2 and 3, features the same core characters and is a fully canon part of the story, but none of the original cast members provided their voices.
There's also a mysterious live-action spin-off series in development, which feels similar to the current Game of Thrones spin-offs that connect to the main story set in a different era with entirely new characters, but still operating in the same universe.
While it's hard to imagine a world where a franchise like Stranger Things dies any time soon, how long will it take for them to get the band back together?
While some may show little interest, and there doesn't seem to be an appropriate story right now, there's no doubt that a series set 10+ years after the events of Season 5, bringing back some of the original cast, would be a massive hit and a major payday for the creatives and actors.
Netflix doesn't have a ton of IP to work with compared to other entertainment giants, so don't think they'll just abandon these characters forever.
