Do we like Eleven?
A character from Stranger Things (2016–2025)
Our score: 9 out of 10. Yes, we'd back her. She's fiercely loyal, she grows up before our eyes, and she keeps choosing to protect her friends even when it costs her.
Eleven, or "El", is a teenage girl with psychokinetic abilities who escapes from a secret government lab in the show's first episode. She has been experimented on since birth and barely speaks at first, and she can move objects with her mind. She is found by a group of Hawkins kids hunting for their missing friend, and they take her in.
Her arc is about growing up. It is fundamentally about a girl reclaiming her identity and autonomy after trauma and abuse. She starts out knowing almost nothing about friendship, Eggos or the outside world. Over the seasons she becomes a funny, stubborn, brave young woman. She isn't perfect: she can be reckless and quick to anger, and she doesn't always listen. But her loyalty to the Party and to her adoptive family is why she scores so high.
In the finale, Eleven decides to make her own choice. She stands in the portal's doorway and refuses to budge after Hopper builds a bomb to destroy the Upside Down. According to Mike, she and her sister Kali planned a last-minute escape, with an illusion making it look as if the bomb had taken her. The show leaves it ambiguous. Mike says they can't be sure it's true, but he chooses to believe it.