Stranger Things spoiler alert
Millie Bobby Brown’s beloved character “Eleven” was not originally supposed to make it past the first season. In fact, there was not even going to be a second season based on the show’s creators first pitch.
“Maybe I shouldn’t say this because I like to pretend that it was all planned out, but it was originally pitched as a limited series,” Ross Duffer said during a recent Master Class Q&A session at Chapman University (via Cinemablend). “So it was like, Eleven was gonna sacrifice herself and save the world and then that was gonna be it, because there was a moment where limited series were a big deal.”
But the Duffer Brothers were instructed to expand the story while pitching to Netflix, thankfully saving Eleven.
“This is where the business side comes in,” Ross Duffer continued. “When we started pitching it, it was like, ‘We don’t make money off of limited series.’ And I remember when we went into Netflix and we pitched this they were like, ‘Well, we like this but how could it keep going?’ And you’re just sort of riffing in the moment and we were like ‘well Will’s back from this other dimension and he’s not doing very well.’ And they were like, ‘Great!’”
Eleven sacrificing herself at the end of Season 1 makes a lot of sense, but we can not imagine Season 2 without Millie Bobby Brown’s character to save the day.