Stranger Things: How Hopper Knew Eleven Was Alive At The End Of Season 1
Stranger Things season 1 ended with the apparent death of Eleven, but season 2 revealed she was alive and living with Hopper – but how did he know she survived? In just three seasons, Stranger Things has left a number of mysteries that are still waiting to be solved, but there are some others that have been forgotten by the audience as there have been more interesting and exciting things happening in Hawkins. Among those is the mystery of how Hopper knew Eleven survived the Demogorgon’s attack in season 1, and even left food for her in the woods.
At the end of season 1, the Demogorgon went after Eleven and the rest of the group at Hawkins Middle School, where they built their own sensory-deprivation tank. Dr. Brenner and company arrived to take Eleven back to the lab, and the agents were killed by the Demogorgon and Brenner was attacked, but he’s said to have survived. The monster then went after Eleven, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas, and so Eleven stepped up and “sacrificed” herself in order to defeat the Demogorgon, which disintegrated. Eleven also disappeared and was believed to be dead, but at the end of the season, Hopper was shown leaving waffles in a box in the woods, implying that he either knew or hoped Eleven was still alive.
Once season 2 arrived, it was revealed that Eleven wasn’t dead, and was instead sent to the Upside Down. She escaped from the other dimension and came back to the human world a couple of hours later, but by then, the school was surrounded by policemen and the kids were being interrogated. With no place to go and with agents all over the place looking for her, Eleven hid in the woods, where she survived on eating squirrels for weeks. She eventually crossed paths with Hopper, who took her in and lived together in his cabin in the woods – but before that, he had been leaving food for her in a box, and so the question of how he knew she was alive popped up, as the series never explained that. However, one of the flashback scenes might offer a clue as to how Hopper knew Eleven was still around.
After weeks in the woods, Eleven was found by a hunter who asked her what she was doing there alone. Eleven attacked him and stole his hat and jacket, as she had been surviving in the cold with only the dress and jacket she had at the end of season 1. She then found the box with food, and some time later discovered Hopper was the one keeping food there. The hunter probably went to the police after their encounter, and the profile of the girl in the woods surely rang a bell in Hopper’s head. The problem with this is that it doesn’t really fit into the timeline unless the team behind Stranger Things didn’t pay much attention to those details. Judging by Eleven’s hair, she had already been in the woods for a couple of weeks before stealing the hunter’s jacket, and Hopper began hiding food not long after season 1’s finale. With that in mind, the hunter explanation doesn’t fully solve the mystery.
Perhaps Hopper didn’t know Eleven was alive and was just hoping she would be out there and would find the food someday, which eventually happened. This could have been a subtle way of the writers of Stranger Things to show the strong bond between Hopper and Eleven, which would only grow bigger as season 2 progressed and later in season 3, where they were already (legally) family.