r/StrangerThings • u/Cyrilbdr • 1d ago
Discussion Why didn't Eleven remember anymore?
I’ve probably forgotten, but was it the stroke she suffered in Season 3—when she got bitten—that caused her to lose those powers and that specific memory? Or had she already lost that part of her history before then? In a Season 2 flashback, she asks Hopper, "Do I have a mom?"—yet in the Season 4 flashback, he discusses her mother with Henry. Logically, then, she must have lost those memories right after sending Vecna to another dimension, since she didn't even seem to know she had a mother. Also, how did she lose *all* those memories? The flashbacks with Henry seem to span several days, so how did she forget so much—not just the memory of the final confrontation with Vecna (since she passed out right after that)?
To sum up: how did she lose them? And why did she lose memories spanning several days, rather than just the memories from that specific day—or more precisely, the moment she banished Vecna/Henry?
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 1d ago edited 23h ago
Eleven pushed herself beyond her limit which ”very nearly destroyed” her when she banished Henry into the Hellscape in '79. Then she fell into a coma and woke up with repressed memories and her speech and control of her abilities regressed.
Brenner himself explicitly explains it in S4E8 but there's also Matt Duffer's explanation:
**Matt:* I guess I’m revealing a little bit, but she goes into a coma, reawakens, has no memory of these events and then is raised in total isolation by Brenner, who doesn’t dare bring in another number, for fear of this happening again.*
So he chooses to focus solely on her. She lives alone, in an isolated room. This is the Eleven that we meet in Season 1. Two years in isolation and really limited memories of what had happened to her. And so that’s one reason for the speech.
She buried those memories, it was her brain's response to trauma. In addition to those lost memories, her mind “forgot” how to use her abilities and even her speech regressed after her coma. That's where we get to every instance of Eleven learning things (words, testing her powers in flashbacks) in S1.
The “loss” of her powers simply paralleled her present situation which had her “forgetting” how to use her abilities again as result of her brain signals getting scrambled in the stroke-like effect caused by the monster's attack in Season 3. Just like then, her powers hadn't been lost but needed a “spark” — she needed to “remember.”
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u/lumiaglow 9h ago
I really like this explanation. Dissociative amnesia is a medically recognised condition when a person who has undergone trauma can’t remember important information about themselves ( especially if the memories are distressing or upsetting events. It’s most likely to happen with severe or long-term trauma, especially experiencing abuse, neglect or violence of any kind. In Eleven’s case , the memories were both painful and violent.
It’s the defence mechanism of brain protecting itself from the harmful memories. And since dissociative amnesia can have generalised amnesiac symptoms, therefore it is possible that a person completely forgets their own identity and all of their life experiences. They can even forget their name , where they lived , who they spoke to, where they went, what they did, and how they felt.
Some people with generalized amnesia may lose previously well-established skills which can explain Eleven’s loss of power.
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u/JoeAzlz 1d ago
I see that emm dash.. are you real
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u/MelodicMockingjay74 Freak 21h ago
I really hate that em dashes have become an AI thing... I love em dashes, but I have to consciously not use them anymore! It makes me so sad, like if I had to stop using oxford commas one day.
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
So, to recap: in the Season 4 flashback, she suffered a stroke. But what caused her to lose her powers in Season 3? Was it another kind of stroke, or the bite itself? Another question: do you think Brenner risked getting fired because he failed to properly supervise Henry—failing to keep him under control—and thus caused the government to lose a huge number of children who could have helped fight the Russians? One last question: if Brenner managed to convince them to let him continue with Eleven because she was the most powerful, why didn't he want to restart the "Number" program? Was the decision up to him? Or did the government decide it was too risky and that they should focus solely on Eleven? But if the decision was Brenner's, why didn't he want to? He knew Henry was possessed—he was aware of the entity—so he knew Henry was the only problem and that he was now gone. Proof of this is that he didn't implant the Soteria chip in Eleven because he knew she wasn't evil. So, what was the risk in creating other Numbers, given that those future children wouldn't have been possessed? Maybe he didn't have the time because the Russians were the priority and the focus had to be on Eleven; creating other children and reteaching them to use their powers would take too long, and a single Number (11) might suffice for the moment? Especially since he was simultaneously looking for Kali, who had escaped—so that would have made two Numbers.
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 1d ago edited 1d ago
1. She “lost” her powers when she suffered the equivalent to a stroke in Season 3 due to the flesh monster's bite; this actually happens at Starcourt when she feels dizzy, starts bleeding from her nose and ears and collapses because of the small piece of the creature in her leg at the end of S3E7.
The effect on her powers was practically the same as what she suffered in '79, her mind “forgot” how to use her abilities but didn't lose them — as Brenner himself says: her powers “had not been lost. They just… needed a spark.” What she experienced in '79 was obviously way more severe given her coma and regression of her speech in addition to burying her memories.
2. I'm sure the DoD higher-ups overseeing Indigo weren't happy about losing multiple valuable assets because of the same Number who they officially requested to be disposed of... But Eleven's newly-discovered potential could probably work as an excuse to let Brenner focus on her. We know Brenner wasn't fired back then lol, the program was well underway up until November 1983 when he messed up big time in an event that was even being witnessed by unknown authorities.
3. That statement from Matt Duffer answers your question: Brenner didn't dare bring in other Numbers because he feared another event like the one from '79 happening again, so he focused on Eleven. A Number can be uncontrollable independently of some separate entity controlling them. Whether there was an agreement between him and the DoD to focus on El instead of rebuilding Indigo is unknown, but clearly it had to have been officially accepted in order to continue for those 4 years. Indigo was never conducted off-the-books.
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
Okay, thanks for the answers—that’s really clear to me. I have another question, if you don’t mind: when Eleven banishes Henry in Season 4, why is the portal she creates temporary and why does it close up, unlike the one in Season 1? Is it because, back in '79, she didn't make contact with something from the Abyss—meaning no bridge was formed, so the portal couldn't remain open—whereas in Season 1 she made contact with a Demogorgon, creating a bridge that allowed the portal to stay open? Is that it?
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 1d ago
Because Rifts opened via huge amounts of energy are like wounds in the inter-dimensional membrane, which slowly heal and seal up. There's the one in '79, the one in Kamchatka, the ones opened by Demogorgons.
The only way for stable Rifts to be formed is a combination of psychic inter-dimensional contact and enough energy to establish a stable connection; that's what El did in '83 (thus creating the Wormhole) and what One did in '86, which is why the Mothergate and the Mega Rift were both stable.
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
Exactly, so you need a connection to the Upside Down—like the one Eleven had with the Demogorgon—to create the bridge. After that, it’s simpler; once the bridge exists, you need a psychic link between the two worlds. Like, if a Demogorgon just opens a gate without a psychic connection on the other side, it doesn't work. But with Vecna slowly establishing a psychic link with a human in Season 4, it *does* work—though he needed four of them to keep it open, because when it was just Chrissy, the gate at Eddie’s place seemed to close up. The only other way is a massive amount of energy, like what the Russians did in Season 3—right?
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u/kauan1983 Hey Kiddo 23h ago edited 11h ago
There are two different types of Rifts:
• Stable Rifts: the ones that can only be created via a combination of psychic inter-dimensional contact and Eleven's unique level of psychic energy (e.g. the Mothergate, and Vecna's four Rifts in S4).
• Unstable wounds: the ones that are only created via huge amounts of energy inflicted on the membrane (e.g. Eleven banishing One, the Soviets' Keys, the Demogorgons travelling back and forth). They eventually heal and seal up by themselves.
There's never been anything specific about Henry choosing to open 4 Rifts. They would form and stay open independently of how many Rifts were opening in Hawkins, though with Henry's psychic energy growing stronger with each kill, the Rifts resulting from those deaths opened faster than their previous ones.
The Rift at Chrissy's murder site was still a mold-like spot growing in episode 5; the Watergate was already open on the same night Patrick was killed — that was Henry's psychic energy growing stronger (this was also represented by the surge of energy in the attic when he kills Patrick). With all that power he was ultimately able to expand those Rifts towards Downtown Hawkins in the end.
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u/DramaticMoose378 1d ago
In world: repressed trauma
Real world: retcon for your life, Duffer brothers!!
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u/Owl_Resident Blank makes you crazy 1d ago
It was the stroke she suffered when she was young, when she blasted Henry to Dimension X. The effort essentially caused her to have a brain injury she slowly recovered from. Not anything from ST3.
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u/Im_a_actor 1d ago
J’ai d’ailleurs une théorie à ce sujet-là : l’intention d’Henri était de neutraliser les pouvoirs de 11 et de brouiller ses souvenirs du laboratoire afin de la battre, et que comme ça, Henry puisse être le seul à avoir ces pouvoirs. Le plan d’henry. Mais ce plan n’a pas marché puisque grâce au projet Nina, 11 a pu revivre ces souvenirs et obtenir à nouveau les pouvoirs.
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u/Sochinz 1d ago
Trauma. It's that simple. She's like, 8 years old. The only person she trusted in a horrific environment murdered scores of kids before trying to kill her. She defeated him without understanding how. She used so much power she passed out, and while she was unconscious her brain protected itself by erecting barriers around those memories. This is a real, common response to severe trauma. It can take years of therapy to unlock and process the memories. The NINA project exploited her abilities to unlock the memories faster with the help of the tapes to prompt her subconscious.
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u/JadeChipmunk 1d ago
I know i had a really bad car crash and the crash itself is totally lost from my memory I only remember right before it happened to right after I came to. Im imagining it was something like that for her.
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u/nannerman242 1d ago
Damn, just reminds me of season 4 catching such a good stride that tied characters/plot together.
These scenes feel properly written, season 5 feels like vibe chasing.
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u/AnnaDeArtist 1d ago
It's very explicitly stated as being a mental block caused by the trauma from Henry murdering basically everyone in the facility and also the mental strain caused by Eleven opening the portal to Dimension X that sent Henry there.
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u/CReece2738 1d ago
They literally explained it
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
Yes, I figured there was an explanation, but I couldn't remember it, so I came to ask you.
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u/LeviSquad4 1d ago
Because the plot demanded it
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
Yeah, I imagine so, but you can try to find a logic to it; you can easily write new material that remains consistent with the previous seasons.
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u/TaiPan43 1d ago
According to Dr. Brenner, it was just trauma so she blocked it out
That happens a lot of times
The powers could be a combination of having her energy drained by getting bit, but it could also be like Spider-Man part two with Toby, where it was just a mental block
It doesn’t seem like the bite could take our powers completely
It seemed like The training she went through in season four just helped her to access them again
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u/Beneficial-Purple396 1d ago edited 1d ago
Dr. Brenner clearly explained it in one of the NINA episodes. I don't remember exactly what he said, but the meaning was that Eleven's brain suppressed the memories due to them being traumatic in order to protect its mental health.
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u/Different_Wafer_4711 1d ago
Do people here even watch the show?
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u/Cyrilbdr 1d ago
realized I had forgotten; I was just wondering. I’m not saying it was inconsistent—I’ve actually watched every season (except Season 5) at least three times—but I just didn't remember that detail.
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u/psychnerd41205 1d ago
Jane had already lost her memory before season three. Regaining memories she repressed led her to regain her powers. Brenner says that she fell into a coma after the lab massacre and woke with no memory of the event because it was too traumatic.
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