Hopper and Eleven in Stranger Things: the father, the daughter and the letter

Before Eleven: Sara, Hopper's daughter

Before Eleven, there was Sara, the daughter of Jim Hopper and his wife, Diane. They live in New York, where Hopper is a cop. Sara dies of cancer in 1978, as a child. The couple divorces. In 1979, Hopper moves back to the town he grew up in and becomes police chief. He drinks, takes pills, lets the days go by.

The series barely shows her. In “The Upside Down,” the last episode of season 1, three memories come back to Hopper: Sara no longer able to breathe, and her father breathing with her; a stuffed animal, the same one as on her hospital bed; doctors who fail to revive her, intercut with the CPR he gives Will. On his wrist, he wears his daughter's blue scrunchie.

He rarely talks about her. In 1986, in the fifth episode of season 4, he tells Dmitri, his cellmate, about Sara: the cancer, and the defoliant he was exposed to in Vietnam. His conclusion is not that he is cursed, but that he himself is the curse.

1983: the deal, then the waffles

November 1983. Hopper is searching for Will Byers; Eleven, who escaped from the lab, is hiding at Mike's. Their first bond is a rescue, in “The Bathtub,” the second-to-last episode of the season: Hopper takes down the lab men who were about to find the kids, hidden in a bus at the junkyard. At the middle school, he and Jonathan fetch the bags of salt that turn an inflatable pool into a makeshift isolation tank; in it, Eleven locates Will. Then comes the betrayal. In the last episode, held at the lab, Hopper offers to keep quiet in exchange for a way into the other world, to bring Will back. Dr. Brenner agrees on one condition: knowing where Eleven is. Hopper gives up the location, demanding that the three boys not be touched.

At the middle school, Eleven destroys the creature and vanishes with it. Hopper and Joyce bring Will back alive. Leaving the hospital, Hopper gets into a black car without a word: the deal goes on.

A month later, on Christmas Eve, he leaves the station party with leftovers, drives to Mirkwood and leaves a tray of food and some Eggo waffles in a wooden box. The episode explains nothing. Hopper is betting she is alive.

Season 2 tells what comes next in flashbacks. Out of the Upside Down through a rift at the middle school, Eleven lives in the woods for a month, finds the box, then the man who fills it. Eleven's full story starts long before him, at the lab.

1984: the cabin, the rules, Jane Hopper

Hopper sets her up in his grandfather's cabin, deep in the woods. They string tripwires between the trees; he teaches her Morse code for the radio. Three rules: curtains drawn, door locked, never go out alone. For almost a year, no one knows she is alive, not even Mike, who calls out to her every night.

Hopper keeps promising her she will see Mike soon. On November 1, 1984, she breaks all three rules. That night, in “Will the Wise,” he punishes her and rips out the TV cables. She compares him to Brenner, tells him she hates him, and the windows blow out. The next day, under the floorboards, she finds out that her mother is alive: Hopper had lied to her. She leaves; the season 2 recap tells the story of her running away.

She comes back on her own to save her friends, then sets off with Hopper to close the gate. In the car, in the last episode, “The Gate,” Hopper apologizes and tells her about Sara, whom she didn't know existed. She takes his hand. A month later, Dr. Owens hands Hopper a forged birth certificate in the name of Jane Hopper. At the Snow Ball, Eleven wears Sara's blue scrunchie on her wrist.

1. Late 1983 The box

   Eleven finds the box, then Hopper, who takes her to the cabin.

2. October 30, 1984 Late

   Hopper comes home late without calling ahead on the radio.

3. October 31, 1984 The compromise

   No going out for Halloween: a horror movie with him. He comes home late again.

4. November 1, 1984 The outing

   Eleven goes to see Mike. That night, the windows blow out.

5. The next day The cardboard box

   Under the floorboards, proof that her mother is alive.

6. November 1984 The gate

   Hopper covers her with a shotgun while she closes it.

7. December 1984 Jane Hopper

   Owens hands over the birth certificate. Eleven has a name, and a father.

8. December 15, 1984 The Snow Ball

   A night out, cleared with Owens.

1985: the open door, then the letter

Summer 1985. Eleven and Mike have been going out for seven months, and Hopper can't stand it. His rule: the bedroom door stays open three inches. In the first episode of season 3, Joyce advises him to have a calm conversation and helps him write a speech.

The speech never gets read to the end. Annoyed by Mike, Hopper makes up a sick grandmother, drives him back in the police car and threatens him. Mike then lies to Eleven, who breaks up with him in “The Mall Rats”: the story of Mike and Eleven tells the rest. Critics faulted this Hopper for having regressed.

On July 4, 1985, before going down into the Russian base, Hopper asks Eleven to stay safe. Under the mall, stuck on the wrong side of the machine, he signals to Joyce to turn the keys. He vanishes in the explosion. From Joyce's face, Eleven understands. The end of season 3, explained goes back over those minutes.

Three months later, before the move to California, Joyce finds the speech among Hopper's things and gives it to Eleven. In it, he talks about the cave he lived in before the waffles in the woods, and his fear of watching her grow up. He asks her to make mistakes, learn from them and remember the hurt: it proves you are out of the cave. He ends with the bedroom rule: “keep the door open three inches.”

1986: apart, then the cabin

Hopper is not dead: season 4 shows him as a prisoner of the Russians, in Kamchatka. Eleven lives in Lenora Hills, California, without her powers, and believes he is dead. In “Papa,” Joyce, who has come to get him, tells him how much Eleven misses him.

During the battle of March 1986, Eleven enters Max's mind from a pizzeria in Nevada. At the same time, Hopper, Joyce and Murray kill the creatures kept by the Russians, which weakens Vecna. The season 4 recap follows every front.

The reunion comes at the end of the ninth episode, “The Piggyback.” Eleven and her friends are at the cabin, abandoned since 1985, to fix it up. A car pulls up: Hopper and Joyce. In her bedroom, Eleven, in tears, is reunited with the man she had long believed dead; he compliments her new haircut. Both roles have been played since 2016 by David Harbour and Millie Bobby Brown.

1987 and the ending: the bracelet given back

November 1987, nineteen months later. The town is under quarantine and the military is hunting Eleven. She and Hopper are living in hiding at the cabin again. He trains her on an obstacle course, but in “The Crawl,” the first episode of season 5, he refuses to take her into the Upside Down. The dad of 1984 is back.

She goes in anyway to save Holly, in “The Vanishing of Holly Wheeler,” and runs into him. Wounded, he lets her dress his wound, tells her about Sara's courage and cries: he can't lose her the way he lost his daughter. In “Sorcerer”, she finds out he is carrying explosives, as a last resort against Vecna; he sends her away, telling her he loves her.

In the last episode, “The Rightside Up,” Hopper is watching over the isolation tank Eleven is submerged in when Vecna gets into his head. Vecna shows him Sara, in a fog of Agent Orange, accusing him of letting them both die, then Eleven and Kali's plan: to stay in the Upside Down when it is destroyed. Thinking he is aiming at Vecna, Hopper fires, sees Eleven wounded in the tank and smashes it open with his gun butt: the wounds were only an illusion. Later, on the roof, Eleven tells him he was the father who saved her, but that she is no longer a child and that, unlike Sara, she can choose. She gives him back the blue bracelet.

In front of the group, Eleven seems to stay in the Upside Down as the bomb destroys it; the series shows neither her death nor her way out. In May 1989, Hopper has his badge back. He finds Mike on a bench and talks to him about two roads: blaming yourself for the rest of your life, or accepting Eleven's choice. He took the first one after Sara, and recommends it to no one. That evening, he asks Joyce to marry him. Mike's theory about Eleven is in the end of the series, explained.

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