Maya Hawke has revealed that she unintentionally caused a Stranger Things fan to lose a “lot of money” after they bet on who they thought would die in the show’s finale, using the actor’s “obscure hints.”
The 27-year-old star, who portrayed Robin Buckley on the final two seasons of the hit Netflix series, recounted the unfortunate event on Thursday’s segment of The Late Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
“Somebody came up to me and asks me — I just heard this today — who was gonna die,” Hawke explained. “And I didn’t tell them, but I gave them some obscure hints, and they took my obscure hints and they placed a bet with a lot of money on my hints and they lost it all.”
Baffled, host Fallon replied: “That’s a tough lesson to learn.” Hawke implored, “This is not how we should be running our economy, predicting random events on television shows!”
*Warning — Stranger Things series finale spoilers to follow*
“But we’re happy that Robin survived,” Fallon enthused. Hawke agreed, adding that “it meant so much” to have her character be a part of the big finale in such an important way.
In the two-hour-plus climactic series finale, Robin supports Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) as he comes to terms with his sexuality, a crucial step in helping him fully harness his supernatural abilities to ultimately defeat the villainous Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) alongside Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
Despite widespread fan theories about who would die, the final episode saw the deaths of Eleven, her friend Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), and Vecna.
After Joyce (Winona Ryder) cuts off Vecna’s head, Hopper (David Harbour) and Murray (Brett Gelman) rig bombs on the interdimensional bridge to the Upside Down, with Eleven seemingly staying behind in the nether world to sacrifice herself.
Eleven’s ending, although ambiguous, was perhaps the most surprising. In one of the final scenes of the show, Mike (Finn Wolfhard) claims that Eleven had actually faked her own death and had managed to make it out of the Upside Down. As he speaks, we see an older Eleven wandering through a faraway place, before reaching a town.
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Series co-creator Ross Duffer cryptically addressed Eleven’s fate with Netflix’s Tudum, saying: “She lives on in their hearts, whether that’s real or not.
“The fact that they’re believing in it, we just thought it was such a better way to end the story and a better way to represent the closure of this journey and their journey from children to adults,” he explained.