Eleven: The strongest Stranger Things character’s origins, age & powers

Though it has many lovable characters, one ‘bitchin” girl is the heart of Stranger Things. Eleven’s origins, supernatural abilities, and friendships are the engine underneath the Netflix series.

Her story will be wrapped up in Stranger Things Season 5 when our troupe of unlikely Hawkins heroes wrestles Vecna‘s catastrophic grip on the town.

Season 4 of Stranger Things saw Jane Hopper (her newly minted legal name) at her most powerful – banishing Henry Creel, fighting tooth and nail to save Max’s life, and racing home to help friends as the clock tolled.

The end of the road has been paved with heartfelt wins, unbreakable bonds, and many nosebleeds.

Origins

Eleven got her powers from the MKUltra government program, which kidnapped her from her mother, Terry Ives, and raised her as a test subject.

Birth and childhood

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She was born Jane Ives to a mother who was an unwitting subject in the CIA operation. Psychedelic drugs, sleep deprivation, and other experiments were conducted to induce abilities to be deployed during the Cold War. Jane was affected in the womb.

She was immediately taken from Terry when she was born and relocated to Hawkins Lab, where she was the eleventh of Dr. Martin Brenner’s (‘Papa’ to her) young subjects.

He tested Eleven and the other kids’ abilities at the lab for years while keeping them prisoner.

Meeting One

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Eleven showed more promise than other kids at the lab, besting them in dog fights forced by Brenner. This attracted the attention of an orderly, or so we thought…

Henry Creel, Brenner’s first-ever subject, connected with her as resentment toward Papa grew. However, she would later forget most of this until unlocking the memories in Season 4.

Henry manipulated her into disabling a power dampener inside his body and then massacred the other kids in the lab. Twisted by years of isolation in childhood exploring his gifts, he wanted to join forces with Eleven and reshape the world – without concepts and structures non-gifted people clung to for meaning.

Despite a possible opportunity to escape, Eleven refused.

Sealing One away

Even though she was far younger, Eleven overpowered him in a psychokinetic showdown in the lab. Their mental battle ripped a hole in spacetime, and she forced Henry through the temporary gate.

As he tumbled through the red, dust-filled clouds in the Upside Down, his body was transformed by the environment. Jane and Henry’s stories run parallel in many ways, and this moment is crucial for both.

It’s also the start of future problems, as Vecna swears on getting revenge and returning to Hawkins with the might of another dimension at his fingertips.

Escaping Hawkins Lab

On November 6, 1983, Eleven made contact with a creature from the Upside Down during a session run by Brenner. This contact opened a second gateway in the lab.

Chaos ensued when a creature came through, allowing Eleven to crawl out a drain pipe. It’s after this that Mike, Dustin, and Lucas find her in the woods in Season 1 Episode 1 while searching for the missing Will.

Powers

Eleven’s psionic powers include telekinesis and biokinesis. She is also capable of dimensional travel.

She can also arguably resuscitate people under certain circumstances, though we’re not sure how it works (she restarted Max’s heart in the Season 4 finale but couldn’t heal her injuries).

Most of her abilities are possible through her telekinesis, which she developed while in her mother’s womb. However, the psychic powers Papa nurtured at Hawkins Lab are responsible for much of what she can do concerning the Upside Down and people connected to it.

• Telekinesis
  • Levitation
  • Binding
  • Moving objects and creatures
• Biokinesis
  • Disintegrating the bodies of some creatures
  • Healing
• Dimensional travel
  • Opening gates
  • Closing gates
  • Manipulating existing gates
• Psychic powers
  • Telepathy
  • Mind walking
  • Memory reading
  • Psychometry
  • Technopathy

Her evolution throughout the seasons

Season 1

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Eleven starts the series scared and alone. Her objective is to stay hidden so that she doesn’t get taken back to Hawkins Lab. Meeting the rest of the gang and hearing about Will’s disappearance changes things.

The other kids eventually convince her to use her powers to help find Will, and Eleven tries to warn them about the dangers of the Upside Down.

Because of her limited communication (she has a small vocabulary and doesn’t understand ’80s culture after having been kept underground for so long) there are a few bumps along the road. Though there are disagreements, she always comes through for them in the end.

As the kids track Will and work with Joyce Byers to bring him back, Eleven is pushed to her limits. At the end of Season 1, she’s instrumental in successfully saving Will and destroying the Demogorgon at Hawkins Middle School.

Season 2

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Season 2 is where Hopper and Eleven evolve in parallel to each other. For El, though, her journey is about learning what happened to her mother.

Pivotal moments include meeting Terry face to face – though the latter is in a vegetative state – running away from the cabin Hopper pleaded with her to stay in, and dealing with some understandable tween angst.

While all this is going on, the Mind Flayer is slowly possessing Will and trying to break into our world through a massive gate in Hawkins Lab.

Hopper and El bravely venture to it, and El uses every ounce of power she has to close it just as the giant shadow of the Flayer looms at its periphery.

In the finale, Eleven and Mike’s budding young love takes the forefront. The season-long arc of her trying to live some semblance of a normal life concludes with her slow dancing with him to ‘Time After Time’.

Season 3

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Young love quickly becomes gross love, in Hopper’s eyes at least.

The kids are now entering their mid-to-late teenage years, and their interpersonal conflicts drive much of the character stories.

El is given some time away from the men/boys in her life in Stranger Things Season 3. It turned out to be a healthy thing: she builds a solid friendship with newbie Max, is one of the only people to notice Billy Hargrove is demon-like in more ways than one,

Good news if you’re a bad guy from the Upside Down! Everyone’s distracted by jealousy and growing pains, all the while Russians on Hawkin’s outskirts are prying open a gate using a device we call the ‘key’.

Hopper and Joyce take over gate duties this time, as Eleven is busy keeping her friends alive at Starcourt Mall. Unofruntaly for El, Season 3’s ending isn’t a happy one; Hopper is believed dead after being caught in the key’s explosion.

Season 4

Eleven is an official member of the Byers troupe in Season 4. They move to California for a fresh start, and angel-on-Earth Joyce treats her like she’s her own.

As if losing her adoptive father wasn’t enough, Eleven is relentlessly bullied at school, and she feels disconnected from Mike – who’s having trouble saying those three big words.

It isn’t long until Eleven is pulled back into danger. Papa kidnaps her, saying that she’s needed to prevent catastrophe. Papa is manipulative as ever, but he’s got a point. Vecna’s machinations are coming to a head, and Eleven is the only person who has ever bested him.

Her friends’ pleas are more convincing than Papa’s. When she learns Max, and by extension everyone else, is in danger, the race back to Hawkins is on.

She arrives in time to save Max, though she barely hangs on by a thread after Vecna is done with her. It’s a gut-wrenching moment for El, who has always saved the day with minimal losses.

Season 4 ends with Vecna surviving the attempts on his life and his gates tearing through the town. After she reunited with Mike previously (who said those three big words!), we last see her staring at the damage done to Hawkins, a resolute look on her face.

Relationships

Mike

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Eleven and Mike are a couple in later seasons, but their close relationship was forged in Season 1 when Mike trusted and protected her.

Other characters took a lot longer to warm up to her given she didn’t have full control of her powers, but Mike helped establish Eleven as part of their friend group.

The seeds of young love are present from the start, but that facet of their relationship made leaps and bounds in Season 3 when they were a bit older.

The couple is split up when Joyce takes in Eleven after Hopper’s ‘death’ in the Season 3 finale, so they don’t share much screen time in Season 4. But now that the fight against Vecna is on, they’re hand in hand once more.

Hopper

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Hopper is Eleven’s adoptive father. He first took her in after the events of the Season 1 finale when Eleven destroyed the monster at Hawkins Middle School. He faked her death and kept her in a remote cabin.

That parental element of their bond is incredibly important to both of them; Eleven lost her mother and father, only knowing Papa’s cruel child-rearing in her youth, and Hopper’s daughter died before the events of the series.

Their biggest interpersonal challenge is Hopper’s reluctance to let Eleven roam free. He’s scared of losing another daughter, but Eleven needs to feel unchained after spending so many years under Hawkins.

Though Hopper initially struggles to see eye-to-eye with her, she gives him a newfound purpose and together they create an endearing found family.

They work through it in Season 3 before Hopper is tragically ripped away by the Russians in the finale.

In Season 4, Hopper is believed to be dead, but he’s actually desperately working to get back home to her.

Papa

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Papa was a father figure to Eleven when she resided at the lab. Though he’s a villain in the show, their relationship remained complicated until his death.

Brenner was Jane’s only source of validation or praise and was in total control of reward and punishment at the lab. Eleven’s attachment to Papa is formed around trauma and loneliness.

Even as Eleven grows up and finds out how he kidnapped her, her feelings about him are layered.

There’s no redemption for him, though, and even though it brings her no joy, she lets him go when he perishes in Season 4. Brennen did care about her in his own screwed-up way but ultimately put his research first and scarred the kids at the lab.

How old is Eleven in Stranger Things?

Netflix confirmed Eleven is 12 years old in Stranger Things Season 1 and 18 in Season 4.

Actor Millie Bobby Brown was 12 years old in Season 1, the same as Eleven, but she has now surpassed her character (20 years old, as of July 2024).

• 1974 flashback: 2 or 3 years old
• 1979 flashback: 8 years old
• Season 1: 12 years old
• Season 2: 13 years old
• Season 3: 14 years old
• Season 4: 18 years old

Why she’s called Eleven

Brenner called her Eleven because she was the eleventh test subject child at Hawkins Lab.

Calling the kids by numbers instead of proper names was likely done to dehumanize them. Brenner and employees at the lab were less likely to see the kids’ personhood if they were robbed of their identities in little ways like this.

For more deep dives on the show, read when did Stranger Things come out, explore the Stranger Things cast, how to get Stranger Things skins in Fortnite, and where to buy LEGO Stranger Things sets.