Who dies in Stranger Things season 5: the complete list of deaths in the last season
Season 5 · The deaths · Tally
Before release, everyone expected a slaughter. The last season did the opposite: it kills little, and it kills right. Only one heroine dies, the monster dies twice, and the question asked most, Eleven's, has no answer. Here is who dies, who survives, and why.
The essentials
- Deaths: Kali, Henry Creel, the Mind Flayer entity, Lieutenant Akers
- Open fate: Eleven, left in the collapsing Upside Down
- Injured: Karen and Ted Wheeler, in the attack on their house
- Survivors: the whole 1983 party, Hopper, Joyce, Steve, Robin, Max
Contents
Kali, Eight
The only death of a beloved character. Kali, the lab sister Eleven had left in Chicago in 1984, comes back a prisoner of Dr. Kay's army, which uses her blood for its experiments. Freed by Hopper and Eleven, she joins the fight and helps get the kidnapped children out of Henry's mind. During the assault on the lab, in the last episode, she is hit by a stray bullet and dies.
Her death is not gratuitous: the epilogue lets on that before dying, she and Eleven had prepared a last plan. That is what Mike builds his conviction on that Eleven is alive.
The Vecna T-shirt, the last duel one.
In the shopKids' black Demogorgon hunter T-shirt24,90 €See the product
Henry Creel
The show's monster dies in the Abyss, in the last episode, in three stages: Will immobilizes it through the hive and telekinesis, Eleven impales it, and Joyce cuts off its head with an axe. Then the entity it had carried since childhood, the one that will become the Mind Flayer, rears up in a colossal form, and the group brings it down before detonating the bomb that destroys the Upside Down. The monster therefore dies twice: the man, then the thing.
| Character | Fate | Episode |
|---|---|---|
| Kali | Dead, a stray bullet during the assault on the lab | 8 |
| Henry Creel | Dead, impaled then beheaded | 8 |
| The Mind Flayer entity | Destroyed, in its titan form | 8 |
| Eleven | Open ending, stayed in the Upside Down | 8 |
| Lieutenant Akers | Dead, forced by Eleven to shoot himself | 8 |
| Karen and Ted Wheeler | Wounded, they survive | 2 |
| The kidnapped children | Freed, including Holly and Derek | 7 and 8 |
Eleven: neither dead nor alive
Eleven chooses to stay on the other side while the Upside Down collapses. The show does not show her death; it does not show her way out either; and the epilogue of May 1989 happens without her. Mike, by piecing together details nobody else has seen, convinces himself she is alive, and Hopper chooses to believe it too. The creators refused to decide: it is for the viewer to choose.
Why it is not a deathA death, the show would have shown, like those of Bob, Billy or Eddie. The absence of an image is a choice: Eleven vanishes without anyone owning her, not even the audience.
Those the show spares
The whole party survives: Mike, Will, Dustin, Lucas, Max, woken after eighteen months of coma, and Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, Robin, Erica. Hopper and Joyce too, up to a marriage proposal. Murray goes through the checkpoints disguised as a trucker and makes it. Karen and Ted Wheeler, seriously wounded during Holly's kidnapping, wake at the hospital. Holly comes home.
The most shared theories before release promised the death of Steve, of Hopper, or of Will. None of them came true.
The deaths from previous seasons, as a reminder
| Season | Major deaths |
|---|---|
| Season 1 | Benny, Barbara Holland, and the Demogorgon. |
| Season 2 | Bob Newby, the demodogs |
| Season 3 | Billy Hargrove, Alexei, the flesh monster |
| Season 4 | Chrissy, Fred, Patrick, Eddie Munson, Brenner |
| Season 5 | Kali, Henry Creel, the entity |
The Demogorgon figure, for the first attack.
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The deaths, episode by episode
| Episode | Who dies | How |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Crawl | The convoy soldiers | Attacked by a Demogorgon during the operation in the Upside Down; Hopper comes out wounded |
| 4. Sorcerer | Most of the base's guards | Massacred by Henry and his Demogorgons; Sullivan is burned, not killed |
| 4. Sorcerer | Three Demogorgons | Frozen in mid-flight then killed by Will, first demonstration of his power |
| 6. Escape from Camazotz | A pack of Demodogs | Explosion of the oxygen bottles in the hospital dryer, by Karen |
| 8. The Rightside Up | Lieutenant Akers and his men | Eleven snaps the soldiers' necks and forces Akers to turn his weapon on himself |
| 8. The Rightside Up | Kali | Stray bullet during the lab assault; she dies after hiding the children |
| 8. The Rightside Up | Henry Creel | Arm torn off by Will, impaled by Eleven, beheaded with an axe by Joyce |
| 8. The Rightside Up | The entity and the Upside Down | Hopper and Murray's bomb destroys the exotic matter; the gates close |
The fake deaths and the great scares
The season plays several times with the fear of losing a character without killing them. Karen, at the start of episode 2, is found bloody after her duel with the Demogorgon; she survives, and she is even the one who saves Robin, Vickie, and Lucas four episodes later. Ted, thrown through a wall, comes through too.
Steve almost falls from the radio tower in the finale, caught just in time by Jonathan. Many fans had seen him dying since season 4; the Duffers said they wanted a finale without an excess of deaths. Hopper is wounded from the first episode, then put in danger at every crawl. Max, in a coma since the end of season 4, was given up for lost by part of the audience: she wakes in episode 7.
Finally Eleven. She appears on no death list because the show refuses to decide. She stays in the Upside Down at the moment of the explosion, and Mike's theory, in the epilogue, proposes that she survived thanks to a last illusion of Kali's.
The record compared with the other seasons
Relative to its runtime, season 5 is not very deadly for named characters. The first season had killed Benny and Barb. The second, Bob. The third, Billy and Alexei. The fourth, Chrissy, Fred, Patrick and Eddie. The last season, for its part, buries only one longtime ally, Kali, and its antagonist.
It is a deliberate choice. The creators wanted the 1983 group to arrive whole at the epilogue, and every farewell to be a departure rather than a grave. The only eulogy in the finale is Dustin's for Eddie, dead since the previous season.
The last-season poster.
In the shopFull Demogorgon bodysuit with mask and headpiece66,90 €See the product
TakeawayOnly one heroine dies: Kali, in the last episode. Henry dies twice: the man, then the entity. Eleven stays in the Upside Down; her fate is open. Steve, Hopper, Will, Max: all alive.
Frequently asked questions
Who dies in season 5?
Kali, during the assault on the lab, and Henry Creel, impaled by Eleven then beheaded by Joyce, as well as the entity he carried. Eleven's fate is left open.
Does Eleven die in season 5?
The show does not show it. She stays in the Upside Down as it collapses and does not appear in the epilogue; Mike believes she is alive.
Does Steve die in season 5?
No. He survives, and the epilogue shows him a high-school baseball coach, with a new girlfriend.
Does Max die in season 5?
No. She wakes from her coma in episode 6 and graduates in the epilogue, with Lucas.
Does Hopper die in Season 5?
No. Wounded from the first crawl, he survives the whole season, proposes to Joyce in the epilogue and considers a post in Montauk.
Does Karen Wheeler die?
No. Found covered in blood after the attack on her house, she recovers and blows up a dryer to save Robin, Vickie and Lucas at the hospital.
Does Sullivan die in season 5?
No. The lieutenant colonel is badly burned by Henry during the attack on the base, in episode 4, but he is still alive in episode 7, where he describes Vecna to Dr. Kay.
How many named characters die in season 5?
Three: Kali, Henry Creel and Lieutenant Akers. The soldiers and the creatures are not named, and Eleven's fate stays deliberately open.