From the moment she walked into Benny’s Burgers in a hospital gown, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) has been the gravitational center of the Stranger Things universe. Her supernatural abilities were originally presented as the result of covert government experiments conducted by Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine). For four seasons, audiences watched as she evolved from a frightened lab rat into a formidable telekinetic warrior, serving as the primary defense for Hawkins against the encroaching darkness of the Upside Down. However, Eleven is not the only individual in this universe with such gifts. In Season 5 of Stranger Things, the unexpected return of her sister, Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), changes the understanding of their abilities, leading to a revelation that spells potential doom for the show’s hero.
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Warning: Spoilers below for Stranger Things 5, Volume 2
After being rescued by Eleven and Hopper (David Harbour), Kali reveals what happened to her since we last saw her in Stranger Things. Kali was hunted down by the military’s new director, Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton), and transported to a classified facility constructed inside the Upside Down. There, soldiers strapped her to machinery that dampened her illusion-casting powers while scientists systematically drained her blood. This torture continued until Kali orchestrated an escape, feigning unconsciousness to draw in her captors before killing them with a scalpel and fleeing into the corridors of the base. Her prison break led to a disturbing discovery.
How Eleven’s Powers Relate to Henry’s?
In a hidden wing of the Upside Down base, Kali discovered rows of hospital beds occupied by dying pregnant women. The military had been injecting these women with Kali’s extracted blood in a grotesque attempt to synthetically replicate the psychic abilities of the original Hawkins Lab subjects. This experiment confirms that Henry Creel (Jamie Campbell Bower) is the genetic source of all powers in the franchise. As Kali explains, every child in Dr. Brenner’s original program, including Eleven and Kali, gained their abilities because their mothers were infused with Henry’s blood.
The tragedy of the pregnant women also highlights a deadly biological distinction between Eleven and her siblings. Kali’s blood is toxic to ordinary humans. The women in the lab are dying because their bodies reject the transfusion, treating the genetic material as a lethal poison. Kali, like the other subjects of Dr. Brenner, is an imperfect copy of Henry, unable to replicate his extraordinary abilities. Eleven is a biological anomaly, the only successful experiment in history whose system perfectly integrated Henry’s blood. Consequently, she is the only viable source for the military’s weaponization program. Dr. Kay is after Eleven because she wants to harvest the girl to mass-produce an army of psychic soldiers.
Will Stranger Things Kill Eleven?
The discovery that Eleven is the only viable genetic source for the military’s program forces the narrative toward a bleak ultimatum. While the group gathers at the radio station to orchestrate their final assault on Vecna in the seventh episode, Kali dismantles any hope for a peaceful aftermath. She argues that the military’s pursuit is institutional rather than personal, and that Dr. Kay is merely a replaceable figurehead in a larger industrial machine. If the current director dies and her base is destroyed, the government will simply appoint a successor to hunt Eleven down. As long as she breathes, Eleven represents the potential for unparalleled military superiority, and the powers that be will never stop trying to replicate the success of the original experiment.
Faced with this inescapable logic, Kali convinces Eleven that they must exploit the team’s exit strategy to ensure the safety of the world. The group’s plan hinges on detonating a bomb near the exotic matter in the Upside Down to collapse the wormhole permanently. Kali and Eleven form a tragic suicide pact, agreeing that they will not evacuate with the others before the explosion. Instead, they intend to remain inside the crumbling dimension as the stabilizer is destroyed. By choosing to be obliterated alongside the monsters, they aim to remove the only source of Henry Creel’s viable blood from existence, guaranteeing that humanity can never again attempt to manufacture living weapons.
Volume 2 of Stranger Things Season 5 is currently streaming on Netflix. The final episode arrives on January 31st.
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