Stranger Things: 15 best Eleven moments in the series so far

Eleven reunites with Mike and The Party

This moment connects the second to last and final episodes of season 2. Right at the tail end of episode 8 when the group is trapped inside the Byers house waiting for the Demodogs to come get them, Eleven triumphantly returns and dispatches them.

This is followed up at the beginning of episode 9 when Eleven reunites with the group after being away for them for about a year.

While this season contains many great reunions from Eleven’s reunion with Dustin and Lucas (“he has teeth now!”), her reunion with Joyce and even her much closer reunion with Hopper, it is when she and Mike embrace that make this truly a great all-time moment.

The two young romantics tearfully embrace, and Mike says that after she apparently sacrificed herself at the end of the last season, he never gave up hope on her. Mike never stopped thinking about her and trying to contact her every night. When Eleven says it was 353 days, we know how much each one matters to the other.

While this moment does lead to a confrontation between Mike and Hopper about the latter not revealing the truth about Eleven, the moment when Mike and Eleven embrace is still an incredibly powerful one. After all, it is because of the strength of their relationship that Eleven returns to Hawkins at all, because she came back to save the people she loves.

Not to mention simply the length of time that the two were separated both in the timeline of the show and within the season itself did a great job of increasing the desire to see these two central characters finally reunite, and the show didn’t disappoint. We hope to never see these two separated for so long again.