Stranger Things Season 5 Volume 2 Sets Up Two Major Deaths Ahead Of The Series Finale
Netflix
The following post contains spoilers for the events of “Stranger Things” Season 5, Volume 2.
Ahead of the fifth and final “Stranger Things” season, series co-creators Matt and Ross Duffer tiptoed around any theories about potential character deaths in the show’s concluding episodes. Although “Stranger Things” has killed off fan favorites before — and could easily do it again — the Duffer Brothers have gently pushed back against the idea of any character meeting their demise for gratuitous reasons that don’t serve the plot.
“We just always want to think ahead and not just do it to shock people or because people have a bloodlust, which they seem to have,” the pair told The Independent in November. “We want to make sure that if someone dies like Eddie, who we killed last season, his death resonates throughout the course of Season 5.”
We suppose we should be relieved to hear that the EPs won’t kill off characters willy-nilly — but now that we’ve seen Volume 2 of the Netflix drama’s final season (which released on the streamer Thursday night), their words only make us more nervous about two potential deaths that are foreshadowed in the show’s second-to-last episode ever.
Will Eleven and Kali make it out alive?
Netflix
After Eleven and Hopper rescue Kali from her perch in the military’s Upside Down headquarters, Kali reveals to Eleven that she was being used solely for her blood. Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) kept Kali hooked up to numerous IVs, and Kali later discovered — on the one occasion that she nearly escaped the lab for good — that her blood was being transfused to countless pregnant women, in an effort to create more people like Kali. In short? It’s a new version of the same secret government program that ultimately created Henry (aka Vecna), Eleven, Kali, and more.
In an upsetting conversation during the penultimate “Stranger Things” episode, Kali bluntly tells Eleven that the only way for this cycle of government-created monsters to stop is for both Kali and Eleven to die. It doesn’t matter if the government’s lab gets blown up; they’ll just create a new one. It doesn’t matter if Dr. Kay meets her demise; someone new will just replace her. And it doesn’t matter if Eleven briefly escapes to somewhere peaceful with Mike; the government will find her again, and this process will start anew.
“Don’t you see, Jane? It’s a cycle. A terrible, vicious cycle,” Kali says. “But we can stop it tonight. … After we kill [Henry], after the children are rescued, we don’t leave with the others. We stay on the bridge. When the Upside Down vanishes, so will we. It is the only way, Jane. The only way.”
Kali and Eleven’s conversation gets interrupted by Murray (Brett Gelman) just as it’s reaching this harrowing climax, and the girls don’t get much of a chance to address their fates again before the episode ends. But as Eleven, Kali & Co. prepare for their final showdown with Vecna, “Stranger Things” has yet to present any alternative options that would both destroy the Upside Down and keep Eleven and Kali forever safe from the military’s clutches. Here’s hoping they — and everyone else, of course — survive the series finale, releasing New Year’s Eve at 8 p.m. ET.
What do you think, “Stranger Things” fans: Will the show really go there by killing Eleven and/or her sister? Or will they find another way to win this battle once and for all? Drop your theories in a comment below.
