Jane Teresa "Eleven" Hopper (born Jane Teresa Ives) is one of the main protagonists of the Stranger Things franchise. She is the daughter of Terry Ives, the adoptive daughter of Jim Hopper, the girlfriend of Mike Wheeler, the adoptive sister of Jonathan Byers and Will Byer, the Max Mayfield, Lucas Sinclair and Dustin Henderson, a friend of Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington and Erica Sinclair, and a member of the Party.
As a child, Eleven was experimented on for her inherited psychokinetic abilities but later escaped from the people who had abducted her. She helped Mike Wheeler and his group of friends find and rescue Will Byers from the alternate dimension known by them as "the Upside Down," before becoming an indispensable member of the team and the only one capable of matching the creatures of the Upside Down in terms of power.
Background
Jane Theresa Ives was born in 1971 to Terry Ives and Andrew Richards. Before she was born, Terry participated in Brenner's experiments, where she took psychiatric drugs and received a transfusion of Henry Creel's blood while pregnant. Meanwhile, Eleven's father was expelled from school and drafted into the Vietnam War, where he was killed in action. Unbeknownst to him, Dr. Brenner arranged this so he could instill fear into the pregnant Terry and punish her for finding Kali in the facility. Shortly after Jane's birth, Brenner abducted Terry's infant daughter, along with the rest of the test subjects Eleven would grow up with. Terry was filled with terror even though the reports claimed that Jane was stillborn. She filed a lawsuit against Martin for his interference and suspecting he kidnapped her baby. However, the lawsuit was dropped due to lack of evidence.
Jane (now known as Eleven due to her status as test subject number 11) often spent her childhood in the Rainbow Room. Despite this attempt, Eleven was raised by Brenner, who built himself up to being a father figure for the other test subjects forcing them to call him "Papa." The test subjects were her "brothers and sisters." Psychological tests were conducted to exploit the telekinetic abilities the children were born with.
In 1974, Eleven remembered an incident when she was three years old when a woman found her and called Eleven by her birth name. It wouldn't be until Jane was a teenager when she realized that woman was her biological mother. Terry had broken into Hawkins Lab, wielding a gun, and was trying to rescue her father. However, the orderlies at the Hawkins Lab caught Terry and Brenner made her go through electroshock therapy that was enough to leave her in a catatonic state for years.
When Eleven was only eight years old, she unintentionally attracted the attention of an orderly who took an interest in her. Since she was often bullied by Two and his followers and everyone else ignored El, she formed a friendship with the orderly. He went on to tell her that "Papa" lied about everything, including the true details that they were the first experiment that no one was allowed to talk about. He also helped her remember the time when her biological mother tried to save her and convinced her that using a painful memory like that would make her more powerful. Unbeknownst to El, the orderly was Henry Creel AKA Brenner's first science experiment. While Henry started teaching her to expand her abilities, he also began manipulating her. On September 8, Two, along with his allies Three, Four, and Five, bullied El with their powers for beating Two in a combat-like exercise and threatened to kill her if she reported the attack to anyone. She was sent to the infirmary afterward and Two unwisely made remarks that left clear that it was he who had attacked Eleven, leading Brenner to torture him with an electro-shock collar.
In the afternoon, Eleven and the orderly were playing chess together and the latter offered the young girl a chance to escape the lab. He disclosed or lied to her that the other subjects were plotting to kill her and Brenner intended for that to happen. He discreetly gave her a keycard and instructed her to meet him in the basement. Once it was the right time, she feigned being ill to another orderly and asked him to take her to the Infirmary. Taking advantage that the orderly was distracted, Eleven fled to a door, where she used Henry's keycard to open the doorway to the basement. However, the security guards nearly apprehended them in the basement. She used her powers to remove the power-dampening chip in Henry's neck, restoring his powers, which he used to maim and kill several of the guards, much to Eleven's surprise and shock. After killing the guards, Henry took Eleven to a storage cupboard and revealed his “001” tattoo to her. One told her to remain in the storage closet as he walked over to the Rainbow Room and went on a murderous rampage, killing the majority of the subjects and Hawkins Lab personnel and knocking Martin Brenner unconscious. When Brenner woke up, Ten had been murdered by One.
Growing tired of waiting, Eleven left the storage closet and made her way to the Rainbow Room, where Eleven witnessed One murdering Two, much to her horror. Henry explained his entire life and philosophy of wiping out humanity to Eleven, asking her to join him. However, Eleven refused him when she realized Henry was a greater evil than Dr. Brenner and the test subjects. Henry, enraged, began to attack Eleven with the intent to kill. Even though she managed to fling him across the room, Henry nearly overwhelmed Eleven due to his more experienced and powerful abilities. However, the younger Eleven found the strength to fight back due to the love and painful memory of her mother trying to save her. She overpowered One and pinned him to the walls; as she did so, Eleven accidentally opened a gateway to an unknown parallel dimension, which Henry disappeared into. After the gate closed, Brenner entered the Rainbow Room and saw the massacre at Hawkins Lab. Upon seeing Eleven covered in blood, Brenner assumed she was the one responsible. However, when Brenner reviewed the surveillance footage, he learned that One was responsible for the massacre at Hawkins Labs and became amazed at what Eleven had done. She was a power that was something he had never seen before. Unfortunately, her powers had digressed and Eleven slipped into a coma. She woke up in the infirmary with Brenner by her side. However, "Papa" realized she had no recollection of Henry, her battle with him, or her fellow test subjects.
Personality
Powers and Abilities
Advanced Human Physiology: Due to a blood transfusion from Henry Creel, El was born with psionic abilities after he was exposed to the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, during her mother Terry's time as an MKUltra test subject. However, due to Terry's abilities, El's powers may have been inherited. Martin Brenner describes her abilities as something he has never seen before when he saw El unintentionally use her powers to banish Henry to the Upside Down.
- Psionics
- Telekinesis: Eleven's primary ability. Telekinesis allows her to move objects or people with her mind. Her telekinesis is amplified by her emotions, and she can lift large and heavy objects. She has used this ability to attack people in self-defense, causing physical damage to them. Additionally, she has demonstrated the ability to affect internal organs and even crush the brains of several agents at once. In Season Four, she levitated a 1,000-pound tank with ease and telekinetically manipulated a military helicopter mid-flight.
- Levitation: She first demonstrated this when she made Mike’s model of the Millennium Falcon float. This ability is not restricted to objects, as shown when she levitated Mike to safety after he had jumped off a cliff. Later, Eleven herself levitated as she was closing the Gate, seemingly as an unintended side effect.
- Binding: Eleven can stop her enemies and targets from physically moving, as shown with the Mind Flayer’s tendrils as she held them at bay with her powers in 1985.
- Biokinesis: Eleven could manipulate the bodies of living creatures to a certain extent, as shown when she disintegrated the Demogorgon.
- Resurrection: She used her powers to restart Max Mayfield's heart after she had been temporarily killed by Vecna.
- Telekinesis: Eleven's primary ability. Telekinesis allows her to move objects or people with her mind. Her telekinesis is amplified by her emotions, and she can lift large and heavy objects. She has used this ability to attack people in self-defense, causing physical damage to them. Additionally, she has demonstrated the ability to affect internal organs and even crush the brains of several agents at once. In Season Four, she levitated a 1,000-pound tank with ease and telekinetically manipulated a military helicopter mid-flight.
- Portal Manipulation & Dimensional Travel: Eleven can open gates to the Upside Down. She created the first known gate during her fight with Henry Creel at Hawkins Lab and later opened the Mothergate, but it's unclear if it was intentional. After getting trapped in the Upside Down, she manipulated a temporary gate created by the Demogorgon to escape. The opening of the gate allowed Hawkins Lab scientists to access the Upside Down.
- Extrasensory Perception & Psychic Projection: Jane can gain information through the mind rather than the physical senses
- Telepathy - Often used in tandem with her remote viewing abilities. When she has located her target, she can choose to communicate with them mentally.
- Remote Viewing: Via ESP, she can seek out and find targets in different locations than her own. When amplified by sensory deprivation, this ability is powerful enough to find targets over vast distances, even as far as other dimensions.
- Mind Walking: Eleven can enter the mind of other people by contacting an individual from the Void. In Season Four, when she was bathing in the Surfer Boy Pizza’s refrigerator, Eleven was able to reach Max Mayfield to save her from Vecna’s curse.
- Memory Reading - Eleven can view the memories of others by contacting them through the Void. She was able to see several of Terry's memories and later used this ability to view memories of Billy Hargrove's abusive childhood.
- Psychometry/Token-Object Reading: Eleven information gains about a person by touching an individual's related piece. She was able to identify Will’s D&D game piece.
- Evocation: Jane can seemingly communicate with deceased characters. This is seen in "The Piggyback" when she talks with Max Mayfield whilst in ESP
- Technopathy: Eleven can control or manipulate technology to an extent. Each time she does this, her technopathy has varying results. She can transmit people’s voices and other sounds to other locations over electronic speakers.
Abilities
- Survivalist Skills
- Intellect
- Empathy
- Stealth Morse Code
- Fighting Adaptation
Role in the series
Season One
Fearing Henry still lurked out there in the darkness, Brenner made Eleven undergo a series of painful experiments. If she refused, he would punish her by throwing her in solitary confinement. Eventually, Eleven got tired of being mistreated, especially when her training involved trying to find a Soviet spy. She was often lowered into a tank filled with water, allowing her to access the void more clearly. On November 6, 1983, Eleven was forced to make contact with a creature by entering the void.
She reluctantly contacted the creature while it fed off a yellow, large egg. In the moment contact was established, a second gate opened, invoking panic in the labs. Eleven made her escape through the basement's drainpipe and fled to the surrounding woodlands of Hawkins, Indiana, where she was found by Mike Wheeler, Lucas Sinclair, and Dustin Henderson, who took Eleven in and realized her powers could help them find their missing friend Will.
Despite numerous disagreements between the Party in terms of Eleven's intentions, they ultimately joined forces with Will's mother Joyce, and local chief Jim Hopper to build a makeshift sensory deprivation tank to enhance El's abilities to a stronger level. She successfully located Will in the alternate dimension nicknamed by the Party as "the Upside Down." The creature that had kidnapped Will, the Demogorgon, arrived at Hawkins Middle School and killed numerous of Brenner's minions before apparently killing Brenner himself. Determined to put an end to the creature's reign of terror, Eleven bid farewell to Mike and the rest of her friends before disintegrating the Demogorgon with her biokinetic abilities, apparently sacrificing herself in the process.
Season Two
Initially thought dead by the main characters and the audience, El was eventually revealed to have survived her showdown with the Demogorgon in Hawkins Middle School and was taken in by Jim Hopper, living with him in his grandfather's cabin in the woods of Hawkins for nearly a year. After defying Hopper's orders by leaving the cabin alone to see Mike, she and Jim got into an intense argument that ended with Eleven shattering the windows in a "psychic tantrum." The next day, Eleven discovered her true identity as Jane Ives and once again defied Hopper's orders by going on a journey to uncover her past. She tracked down her aunt and now-catatonic mother to the Ives residence, where she relearned her mother's past attempt to rescue her from Brenner's clutches and discovered the existence of her former friend and fellow test subject-- Eight/Kali Prasad.
After spending some time with Kali and her gang of criminals in Chicago, she realized Mike and the others were in terrible danger and returned to Hawkins to aid them in defeating an entity known as the Mind Flayer. Using Kali's advice to fuel her powers through her anger and pain, Eleven successfully closed the gate that she had opened in the premiere of the first season and banished the Mind Flayer and his Demodog lackeys back to the Upside Down.
At the end of the season, Jim Hopper obtained a forged birth certificate that allowed him to become Eleven's adoptive father and allowed her to attend the Snow Ball of 1984 at Hawkins Middle School with Mike, much to the happiness of both.
Season Three
In June 1985, Mike and Eleven's romantic relationship continued to grow stronger, much to Hopper's irritation. He threatened Mike to stay away from El, prompting a frightened Mike to do as told. He tried to use the excuse that his grandmother was sick to justify his distance from Eleven, who was not convinced by such an excuse. El began spending more time with fellow Party member Max Mayfield, despite holding animosity towards the latter in the past. The two girls spent a good amount of time together in the newly constructed Starcourt Mall and became best friends. As the season progressed, Max taught Eleven to be independent because not everything revolved around boys. When the girls were shopping, Eleven and Max saw Mike, Dustin, Will, and Lucas walking around the mall. She realized that Mike was lying to her about his sick grandmother. Tired of Mike's lies, El followed Max's advice and "dumped his sorry ass" in front of their friends. When Will revealed the Mind Flayer had returned, the Party members reconciled with one another to fight the entity off and discovered it had selected Max's stepbrother Billy as its new host, forcing him to sacrifice dozens of citizens of Hawkins to the Mind Flayer so it could create a proxy form.
On July 4, Independence Day, El was badly bitten by one of the Flayer's tentacles and ultimately lost access to her psychokinetic abilities, leaving her and her friends even more vulnerable in the final battle in the Mall. When the possessed Billy brought her to be sacrificed to the Flayer's proxy form, El reminded Billy of his last memory of happiness with his mother before she left him to be raised by his abusive father, enabling Billy to break free of the Mind Flayer's control. Out of gratitude, Billy saved Eleven from being killed by the Flayer's proxy form, leading to his gruesome death. He apologized to Max for abusing her constantly before succumbing to his wounds, leaving Max a sobbing mess in Eleven's arms. Outside the Mall, El discovered Hopper was seemingly killed in the closure of the Gate to the Upside Down opened by the Soviets.
Three months later, El became Joyce's Maternal Adoptive daughter and the adoptive sister of Jonathan and Will and joined them in moving away from Hawkins to California.
Season Four
Eleven had been living in California with the Byers for eight months but was bullied non-stop by California High School's Queen Bee Angela and her crowd. Having reached her limit when Angela mocked Hopper, El hit Angela hard and broke her nose with a roller skate.
Approached by Dr. Sam Owens, El learned of a program designed to restore and augment her powers, which Owens believed were the only "cure" that could eradicate the new evil being that was threatening Hawkins and her loved ones there. El discovered Brenner had survived his previous encounter with the Demogorgon over two years ago and despite her initial reluctance to work with him, she ultimately relented. After remembering her time with her fellow test subjects and her battle with Henry Creel/One, Eleven's abilities were restored, and learned that Henry, now a monster aligned to the Upside Down known as "Vecna," had already claimed three victims and he was planning to kill Max next to fully break the seal between Earth and the Upside Down. Unfortunately, Brenner wanted to keep Eleven in the program and push her abilities beyond their limit, ignoring her and Owens' pleas to return to Hawkins and incapacitating both. El came to realize that Brenner's experiments since 1979 involved her searching for Henry and blamed the scientist for the death and destruction occurring in Hawkins ever since she inadvertently opened the Mothergate in 1983 because of his ambitions.
Though Lt. Colonel Jack Sullivan launched an attack at the NINA facility to assassinate Eleven, who he believed to be the origin of Hawkins' newest murder spree, Eleven was rescued by Mike, Jonathan, Will, and their friend Argyle and had one final conversation with Brenner before he perished from the gunshot wounds inflicted by Sullivan's men. Learning that she could not return to Hawkins in time, El was assisted by Mike and her adoptive brothers and built a makeshift sensory deprivation tank to astral project to Hawkins, where she entered Max's mind to save her from being killed by Vecna. Although her powers had returned, El was no match for her former mentor and was taken captive along with Max.
In Vecna's mindscape, El tried to reassure Vecna that Brenner was the architect of everything he had become as he had made both of their lives miserable in Hawkins Lab. However, Vecna insisted that he had always been a misanthropic and nihilistic sociopath long before Brenner had even learned of his existence and claimed that the scientist was nothing more than an ordinary man who believed that he could achieve greatness by exploiting his and Eleven's gifts. He proceeded to clarify that Eleven was responsible for his current monstrous appearance by teleporting him to the Upside Down years ago and revealed himself as the ruler of the alternate dimension, having shaped the Mind Flayer and put the other creatures, including the Demogorgon that had abducted Will, under his control. He announced his plan to kill Max and annihilate the rest of Eleven's loved ones and the rest of mankind before finally killing Eleven in retribution for turning on him.
Hearing Mike's speech that he loved her with all of his heart, with or without her powers, and she was a "superhero," Eleven found the strength to break free from Vecna's restraints before shoving the creature away from Max before he could deliver the final blow. Pinned to a pillar, Vecna informed El that there was nothing she or her friends could do to prevent him from unleashing the Upside Down upon Hawkins and the rest of the world, declaring that she and her loved ones had lost and were marked for death, only for El to remark that it was him who had lost. Vecna was then attacked by Nancy, Robin, and Steve, who burned him alive with Molotov cocktails and shot him numerous times with a sawn-off shotgun. Despite managing to throw Vecna out of the attic, the trio was shocked to see that he had managed to escape. Worse news came along when the Party's ally Eddie Munson was viciously mauled to death by Vecna's Demobat minions and Max had three of her limbs broken by Vecna, causing her to pass away in Lucas' arms, much to his and El's horror. To make matters worse, Max's death enabled Vecna's curse gates to expand throughout Hawkins, creating a gigantic gateway between the real world and the Upside Down. Refusing to lose her best friend, El channeled her telekinesis and successfully restarted Max's heart, placing her in a comatose state.
Nearly 48 hours later, El and the rest of the California crew finally arrived in Hawkins and witnessed several families moving out of town following the "earthquake" caused by the opening of Vecna's gates. Reuniting with their family and loved ones, the California group went to the hospital to see Max but El was unable to find her consciousness, much to her confusion and horror. Meanwhile, Will divulged that his connection to the Upside Down was restored and he could sense Vecna was still alive despite his wounds. El had a tearful reunion with Joyce and Hopper, the latter of whom had survived the explosion in the mall last year and spent the last eight months as a prisoner of the Soviet Union. The reunion was interrupted by the appearance of dark particles and a supernatural storm that had begun to poison Hawkins' fauna and flora and they were emerging from Vecna's gates. With her allies standing behind her, El stared at the storm with rage and determination, vowing to destroy Vecna to avenge Max and save her remaining loved ones and the rest of the world from total annihilation.
Season Five
Printed Media
TMNT/Stranger Things
Eleven appears in Issue 1 & 4 of Stranger Things Vol. 1 and Stranger Things SIX Issue 2 of Volume 2. She also appears in the novel Suspicious Minds, which focuses on her biological mother.
Eleven appears in the Dark Horse's comic book crossover TMNT x Stranger Things. In the comics, Eleven and her friends go to New York City where they team up with the Turtles. Eleven uses her psychic projection ability to locate Baxter Stockman and afterward gets a nosebleed.
Video game appearances
She also appears in Stranger Things; The Game, Stranger Things 3, Stranger Things Puzzle Tales, Fortnite, and Smite
Gallery
Relationships
Family
Friends
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Enemies
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Trivia
- Eleven is fond of Eggo Waffles, which she has been ever since Mike introduced her to the food.
- Eleven developed claustrophobia due to the confined spaces she was forced into whenever she failed to live up to Brenner's expectations.
- The blonde wig she wore throughout the first season originally belonged to Mike's grandmother, who died of cancer.
- She speaks the least in Season One, with only at least 200 words. As the series progressed, Eleven's vocabulary expanded and her social skills improved.
- Eleven has a lot in common with Alessa Gillespie, a character from the Silent Hill series.
- She was horrified at the massacre before her, even towards the test subjects who were mean to her.
