Stranger Things comes full circle in the show’s final moments. After defeating Vecna and destroying the Upside Down, the party — which includes Mike (Finn Wolfhard), Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Will (Noah Schnapp), Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), and Max (Sadie Sink) — wrap up their childhoods with one final Dungeons & Dragons campaign. 

During their last hurrah in the Wheelers’ basement, Mike lays out where he and his friends have landed in the years after their world-saving adventure. So what happened to your favorite nerds in the years following their world-saving victory? Keep scrolling for an update on the crew, including who got engaged, who stayed in Hawkins, and more. 

What happened to Max, Lucas, Dustin, Will, and Mike?

Max and Lucas have their long-awaited movie date and eventually settle down together. Series co-creator Matt Duffer confirms that the couple is watching the 1990 film Ghost, starring Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze. “We filmed it,” he tells Tudum. “It was a very romantic scene from Ghost, but then it just kind of took away from their own moment. But that is the movie they’re seeing.”

Meanwhile, Dustin continues his studies at a university but still finds time for adventures with his best bud, Steve (Joe Keery). Co-creator Ross Duffer notes that they “wanted to show that bromance is going strong with Steve because they had a bumpy Season 5.”

Will, who is seen chatting up a male companion at a bar, finds acceptance outside of Hawkins after coming out to his friends and family in Episode 7. The Duffer Brothers liked the idea of Will “going to a bigger city where he would be more accepted in a situation like that,” Ross Duffer says.

And Mike follows his passion for storytelling by becoming a writer. 

Does Eleven die?

Eleven’s (Millie Bobby Brown) fate in the Stranger Things finale is ambiguous. “What we wanted to do was confront the reality of what her situation was after all of this and how could she live a normal life,” Matt Duffer tells Tudum. 

As the Upside Down collapses, Eleven can be seen standing at the MAC-Z gate waiting to be wiped out of existence along with the interdimensional bridge. During that final D&D game, Mike shares an optimistic tale of the sorcerer's final trick, alluding to Eleven’s sister Kali (Linnea Berthelsen) casting one last illusion so that Eleven can escape the Upside Down undetected before it’s destroyed. He and the others choose to believe that she survives and moves to a small remote village where no one can know she’s alive. 

The Duffer Brothers have left it up to viewers to decide how they want to interpret Eleven’s ending. But for her friends, “she lives on in their hearts, whether that’s real or not,” Ross Duffer says. “The fact that they’re believing in it, we just thought it was such a better way to end the story and a better way to represent the closure of this journey and their journey from children to adults.”

Where do Steve, Jonathan, Nancy, and Robin end up?

The teens — which includes Steve (Keery), Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Nancy (Natalia Dyer), and Robin (Maya Hawke) — have gone their separate ways but remain bonded as friends. They all vow to meet once a month at Robin’s “weird” uncle’s house in Philadelphia. 

Steve remains in Hawkins, where he coaches little league baseball — with Derek (Jake Connelly) as his catcher — and teaches the next generation. “It always made sense to us that Steve would choose to stay in Hawkins,” Matt Duffer notes. Plus, working with kids is “something we’ve discovered he’s very good at,” he adds. 

Robin attends Smith College in Massachusetts, which Ross Duffer says was Hawke’s suggestion. 

The Duffers “never want [Nancy] to take the obvious path,” Ross Duffer says, so Nancy drops out of Emerson College to take a job at the Boston Herald. “She’s still trying to find herself and what she wants from the world, so that’s why we wanted to give her that ending.”

The episode also reveals that Jonathan becomes a filmmaker studying at New York University and working on an anti-capitalist cannibal movie. “We set up that he’s been wanting to go to NYU for a very long time. That’s all the way back to Season 1,” Ross Duffer shares. “So it made us happy to see him finally realize his dream.” And Jonathan’s movie is loosely based on a film the Duffer Brothers created in college. 

“The movie we made at film school in college was not an anti-capitalist movie,” Matt Duffer notes, “but it was a cannibal movie about a shape-shifting cannibal, so that was the idea behind that.”

What about Hopper and Joyce?

Hopper and Joyce also find their happy ending in the Stranger Things finale. The pair finally have their date at Enzo’s, which was a scene that had been planned “for quite some time,” according to Matt Duffer. “It’s very difficult what Hopper went through, especially with Eleven, and we liked the idea of him and Joyce having an opportunity to start a new chapter in their lives.” 

Hopper caps their romantic evening on a special note by proposing to Joyce. We end with the happy couple planning a move to Montauk, New York, where Hopper has a job waiting for him as chief of police.  

“Of course, we did the Montauk shout-out because the show was originally going to be set in Montauk,” Ross Duffer explains. “It felt like a nice little wink to the superfans of the show who were aware of that nugget.”

Wish to remain in Hawkins? Revisit all five seasons of Stranger Things now, only on Netflix. Plus, dive deep into the series finale with our ending explainer here. 

Watch the Stranger Things Cast React to Their Very First On-Set Interviews