Why Eleven Can't Talk as Well as the Other Hawkins Lab Patients

"Stranger Things" delivered its most action-packed, darkest, and chaotic instalment yet with the first half of season four, which hit Netflix on May 27. The latest season of the sci-fi series provides some concrete answers to lingering mysteries, including a deep dive into Eleven's (Millie Bobby Brown) traumatic past.

Season four opens with a gory flashback to the Hawkins National Laboratory in 1979, where gifted children like Eleven (born Jane Ives) were being observed and experimented on. The viewers are plunged into the midst of an intense massacre at the lab at the end of which Dr. Martin Brenner (Matthew Modine) finds Eleven covered in blood and standing in the Rainbow Room among tens of dead bodies.

In a previous scene shortly before Eleven was discovered by Dr. Brenner, he is seen training subject Ten to gain control over his extrasensory perception, which piqued many viewers' interest. We see Ten conversing rather eloquently with Dr. Brenner, even cracking a few jokes along the way. This session is in stark contrast with Dr. Brenner's one-on-ones with Eleven.

Before breaking out of the lab in 1983, Eleven only answers Dr. Brenner's questions in a word or two or strings words together in broken sentences. After meeting Mike (Finn Wolfhard) and co following her escape, she struggles to get her situation across due to her small vocabulary. In fact, she speaks so sparingly that the kids think she's mute at first. She says a sum total of 246 words in season one, as pointed out by a Reddit user @ValdemarSt. However, over time, through her interactions with her friends and the residents of Hawkins, she learns how to speak English more fluently. The dictionary that her adoptive father, Jim Hopper (David Harbour), gives her certainly helps speed things along.

The reason why Eleven can barely utter words while her fellow lab patients can could lie in the fact that she has only ever lived inside the confines of the lab. Eleven was abducted under Brenner's orders as soon as she was born. Brenner, anticipating making Eleven a science experiment, orchestrated a fake scenario by falsely informing her biological mother, Terry Ives, that she miscarried her baby. That's why the only words Eleven ultimately picked up on are ones that she saw scientists who were studying her and lab guards use. Given that she was dragged into the laboratory at birth with the primary intent to serve as a human test subject, it stands to reason that neither Brenner nor other scientists made her language skills their priority. Her communication skills never emerged beyond that of an average preschooler, likely due to the absence of any stimuli during a highly impressionable time. Barring her time with Brenner, she practically remained incarcerated in her room. And as we now know, she didn't spend much time with other kids in the lab either, as they all bullied her incessantly.

Based on the events of season four, it stands to reason the other test subjects in the Hawkins Lab did not arrive at the lab in the same manner Eleven did. For example, test subject One, Peter Ballard (also known as Henry Creel, the eldest son of Victor Creel), kicked off the program, and he arrived at the facilities when he was around 12 years old. He had a normal upbringing up until then. It makes sense he was a proficient communicator (like when we see him unleashing his manipulative tactics to manipulate a naïve Eleven). Similarly, Two and Ten, whom we also meet in a fleeting flashback, must have caught Brenner's eye at a young age, but not as young as Eleven's, explaining their better grasp of the language.