Millie Bobby Brown tried to 'mend' friendships with Stranger Things co-stars after finale: 'I was crying on a beach'

There are certain questions that follow actors like a shadow they never signed up for. For Millie Bobby Brown, it seems to be this one: “So… is Eleven dead?”

At a live recording of Happy Sad Confused at 92NY, host Josh Horowitz did what any self-respecting podcast moderator would do when presented with a global mystery and a willing guest, he gently poked the bear. Or in this case, the telekinetic teenager who has survived monsters, government labs, alternate dimensions, and increasingly intense haircuts.

Brown, ever composed, found herself once again at the centre of the Stranger Things secrecy vortex. After the finale aired, she revealed, the Duffer brothers themselves texted her with a very specific instruction: do not, under any circumstances, let the truth escape.

“They were like, ‘Do not tell anyone. Because we made it a secret kind of pledge,’” Brown said. “No one else knows. It’s just us three. And what we do with that information, it’ll be up to them.”

The secrecy around the ending

And that, of course, exactly what you want to hear about your fate in a multi-billion-dollar supernatural franchise. It's now classified information.

But secrecy doesn’t stay secret in the age of livestream reactions and internet detectives armed with forensic levels of curiosity. Brown admitted she watched the finale’s aftermath unfold online with her husband, Jake Bongiovi which is already a modern love story in itself: young couple, newly married, bonding over global speculation about whether she is alive, dead, or emotionally “Schrödinger’s Eleven.”

And while fans were busy theorising, her castmates apparently weren’t helping.

“Jake was like, ‘Ooh, these are really split,’” Brown said. “And the whole cast thinks I’m dead.” And that, is not the kind of group consensus you want from your coworkers.

Brown’s reaction: “One, rude. It’s so rude of them,” she joked. “There’s something to it, surely. You guys are projecting! It’s like, ‘Hey guys, we get it. You want me dead!’ But I was like, ‘Believe!’ Let’s have some hope in here.”

Falling into depression

The actress also revealed that she went into what can only be described as 'friendship damage-control mode' after the series ended. “They probably thought I was crazy,” she said. I was like, ‘We’re still friends, right? Like, you’re not gonna stop talking to me anymore?’ I was like, ‘I’m sorry if I ever upset you,’ and was just trying to mend anything. ‘It’s been 10 years, and I really want to be friends. You’re my sibling.’”

Brown even admitted the emotions didn’t exactly stay neatly contained.

“I was on the beach, it was beautiful, and I just sat there crying,” she said. “It was a very hard time for me.”

And that, she explained, is exactly why the ending hit so hard.

“And no one will ever understand it,” the 22-year-old added. “I started the show when I was 10, and this character was me, and these people were in my life more than my own family. I saw these people more than going home and eating dinner with my family.”

By the time she said goodbye to Eleven, she realised it was the end of an era.“Saying goodbye to that after 10 years was a very, very emotional thing,” she added. “And I’m going to miss Eleven more than anything.”

For those who choose to remain unversed and yet hold on to hope of Eleven returning to a broken Mike (Finn Wolfhard), here's what happened at the end of Season 5: Vecna died and the Upside Down was destroyed and Eleven went with it, while all her friends watched aghast. In the last scene of the series, Mike theorises that she somehow survives (a plotline that has been picked to shreds by fans now). Nevertheless, it's all up in the air, and at this point, fans just hope that Mike and Eleven return for a spin-off and put an end to their misery.