Quantum Physics for the Broken Hearted: Stranger Things

For the past ten years, Stranger Things has been more than just a show to me—it has been a companion. As a child of the 1980s and a writer with a deep-seated love for 80s fiction, the show’s "irresistible cocktail" of science and coming-of-age themes spoke directly to me.

I’ll admit: I’m not the person to give you a cold, critical review of the series finale. My love for these characters blinds me to objective critique. But I need to talk about the ending, because it hit me with a weight I’m still carrying.

The Breadcrumbs of the End

I had long foretold that Eleven would have to die or disappear, leaving Mike behind. The "breadcrumbs" were scattered throughout the series; there was never a path where El could simply stay or where Mike could keep her. As painful as it was, I would have been more upset if the Duffer Brothers had backed out of the ending they promised from the beginning.

In the wake of that finale, as I sat with my grief for these characters, a specific concept from quantum physics kept echoing in my mind: Schrödinger’s Cat.

The Paradox of the Box

Schrödinger’s Cat is a famous thought experiment designed to illustrate the concept of superposition. In this scenario, a cat is placed in a sealed box with a radioactive atom and a vial of poison. If the atom decays, the poison is released, and the cat dies. If it doesn’t, the cat lives.

According to quantum mechanics, until an observer opens the box, the atom is in a state of being both "decayed" and "not decayed." By extension, the cat is both alive and dead simultaneously. The act of observation is what forces the universe to choose a single reality.

Eleven’s fate is the same. She exists in a state of "Alive AND Dead."

The Superposition of Loss

Mike has always been my spirit animal. Like him, I lost the love of my life very young. Though my "Eleven" had no superpowers and is still alive somewhere in the world, watching Mike’s loss reignited that old, familiar ache of grief.

Because of the laws of this fictional universe, El is gone from Mike’s life in a permanent way. He can never go find her, because to "observe" the state of things might be to finalize the loss. But this is where quantum mechanics offers a strange kind of solace for the broken-hearted:

In the vacuum of space—a place that is supposed to be "empty"—particles constantly flash in and out of existence. Science tells us that "nothing" does not actually exist.

Duality Rules

Death and loss are perhaps just illusions we have yet to fully understand. We are here, yet not here. We are gone, yet we remain.

I have been Mike on that bench, staring into the void and trying to figure it all out. I choose to believe along with the gang, because quantum physics is a gift for those of us who lose early in life. It teaches us that we are not "less" because of what we’ve lost. In an infinite universe, duality rules.

The box remains closed. The hope remains real.

Eleven lives.