Sources have told TVLine that Millie Bobby Brown will be returning to Stranger Things for the series’ second season. (Though one of those sources is not, at least publicly, Netflix itself, as they’ve declined to comment.)
It would have been quite a silly move for the Duffer Brothers to have really done away with their most enigmatic and beloved character (no, not Barb) so early, but the showrunners clearly wanted to keep suspense high, and had told Entertainment Weekly that Eleven’s return was “up in the air” — given that she (spoiler alert for viewers who’ve really been pacing themselves) actually vanishes into thin air at the end of Season 1. As TVLine points out, there was also the worry that Eleven might have morphed into someone else entirely, following an announcement that there’d be a new character on the series named Max — a girl whose “appearance, behavior and pursuits seem more typical of boys than of girls in this era,” played by Sadie Sink. (This worry seems somewhat unfounded: there can be two tomboys on one show.)
But thankfully, Brown, who gave one of the most layered performances (and who happens to be 12) with almost no dialogue, looks to be very much coming back, and though it’s not certain, TVLine says that “all signs point to her once again being a series regular.”