Who are the other numbers in Stranger Things? What we know about Eleven’s 'siblings'

At its surface, Stranger Things is a television show about missing children, secret experiments, and creatures from another world. But just beneath that surface—fittingly, like the Upside Down—it's a cultural time capsule shrouded in supernatural terror. Written by the Duffer Brothers and released on Netflix in 2016, the show revives 1980s Hawkins, Indiana, with such attention to detail and care that it almost feels like a memory. Synths thrum softly in the background, rotary phones decorate kitchen walls, and the children live real-world growing pains as they face the unthinkable.

What keeps Stranger Things hanging together isn't even its love letter to the '80s or its genre-bending story. It's that it takes all of this—Demogorgons, telekinesis, government conspiracies—and anchors it in real human stakes. Stranger Things, at its heart, is about regular people running into the strange. There are monsters, sure. However, the show's true pull is from the friendships, the families, and the quiet heartbreaks among all the destruction.

Hawkins itself becomes a presence rather than merely a setting. It's a character—small, modest, with secrets beneath its streets. The Hawkins National Laboratory, which appears to be a federal research facility, is secretly performing experiments with psychic powers and interdimensional portals. In attempting to exploit the paranormal, the lab inadvertently creates an opening between our world and the Upside Down—this cold, dark shadow dimension infested with predators and rot. And from there, nothing is ever exactly normal again.

The chain of events begins on November 6, 1983, when 12-year-old Will Byers goes missing after having spent a night playing Dungeons & Dragons with his closest friends: Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. His disappearance sets off panic, which gets his mother, Joyce, into a frantic search that drives her to the brink of madness.

Meanwhile, Will's hometown police chief, Jim Hopper, begins piecing together evidence that Will didn't simply run off from something; there's something much more sinister. With the lab stonewalling and local authorities clueless, the mystery immediately turns supernatural.

And then there's Eleven. She rides out of the woods and into the lives of the boys like an open-ended question. Her shaved head, reserved intensity, and unrefined psychic powers make her inescapable. It's soon discovered that she's a lab runaway, brought into existence by the same experiments that created the portal to the Upside Down.

While keeping her in hiding from the authorities, the kids start to understand that Eleven may not only be able to lead them to Will—she can help them unravel the whole web of dark events spinning out of control around them.

And Eleven, as her tattoo tells us, isn't alone. The "011" on her wrist suggests a sequence—evidence that there were others before her and perhaps after. Stranger Things never spells it out all at once, but it drops just enough hints to send a tide of speculation surging.

Who were the other numbered children? Where do they exist now? Are they concealed? Armed? Lost? This enigma broadens the Stranger Things universe without forgetting what holds it together: a bunch of kids struggling to rescue one another, regardless of which reality the danger hails from.

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Eleven (011): The protagonist of Stranger Things

Before Eleven, she was Jane Ives—a baby born under fluorescent lights to a mother who did not even know she was pregnant until it was too late to walk away. Terry Ives, a test subject in Dr. Martin Brenner's MKUltra-inspired mind control experiment at Hawkins Lab, did not even know what was happening to her. LSD, sleep deprivation, and sensory tests—standard procedure for the program. What wasn't typical was that her unborn daughter was soaking up all of it.

When Jane was born on June 7, 1971, Brenner didn't return her. He erased her, created a phony death certificate, erased her from existence, and deserted Terry in pieces. When Terry resisted, she was silenced with a shock of electroconvulsive therapy that imprisoned her in the confines of her own mind.

Jane lived among the walls of Hawkins Lab. No name, only a number: 011. Her whole existence was tests, cold concrete walls, cameras, and "Papa"—the only individual she was taught to trust and the one most accountable for what she became.

Brenner experimented with her abilities continuously: controlling objects, remote viewing, and mental invasion. And finally, communication with other dimensions. Her abilities weren't speculative. By 1983, Eleven was physically intercepting Soviet spies from thousands of miles away. But then something went terribly wrong.

On one operation, she pushed too far and opened the gate to something on the other side. A monster. The Demogorgon. The gate she opened never closed. And neither did her story.

She fled the lab via a drainage pipe and wandered into the forest. There, she found Mike Wheeler and his friends searching for their lost friend Will. Eleven didn't only assist them—she transformed them. She was one of them, one of the family. She discovered Eggos, basements, and being a child. But also fear, loss, and sacrifice. She wasn't only Stranger Things' superpowered wild card—she was its emotional core.

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Henry Creel (001) / Vecna: The first and the worst

Before Eleven, before the Upside Down was given a title, Henry Creel existed—some kid born wrong in a society that didn't know what to do with him. Henry wasn't given his abilities through experiments or substance abuse. He was odd from the very beginning.

Born at some point after World War II to Victor and Virginia Creel, Henry relocated with his parents to Hawkins in 1959, as part of a desperate last-ditch effort to flee from whatever malevolence had been germinating in him. It didn't work. Henry's psychic powers became something brutal, even feral.

He started tormenting his parents, warping their minds until fear consumed them. And then he snapped. His sister and mother were discovered dead. His father, who survived, was institutionalized for the murders. Henry vanished. But he did not die. Brenner discovered him.

In awe of Henry's raw power, Brenner took him into Hawkins Lab and referred to him as Subject 001. He inserted a device into his neck to suppress Henry's talents and made him play the part of an orderly, patrolling the halls he should have dominated.

Henry's blood became the template. Brenner used it to seed the next generation: the numbered children, including Eleven. But even powerless, Henry was patient. And when he encountered Eleven—alone, shunned, powerful—he saw a chance. He manipulated her into removing his chip. She did. And he rewarded that trust with a bloodbath. He slaughtered almost every subject and lab worker in the facility.

Eleven was the only one who was powerful enough to get in his way. Her psychic fight with him ended with her tearing open a tear in reality and expelling Henry into the void. That void was the Upside Down. And Henry, consumed and reshaped by it, became Vecna.

Vecna didn't merely live—he became the mind of the hive. The puppeteer behind the Mind Flayer. The terror burrowed through Hawkins. His purpose: to employ pain and guilt as crowbars, wrenching open new portals to combine the Upside Down with our reality.

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Kali Prasad (008): The sister who got away

Before the massacre, before the opening of the gates, one of the children got away. Kali Prasad—Eight—was Eleven's sole authentic friend in the Rainbow Room. Her strength wasn't physical like Eleven's; it was mental. She was able to manipulate perception and convince people to see things that weren't there.

Her illusions had the power to transform rooms, remove people from view, or call forth their deepest fears. Kali vanished into Chicago's underground after escaping the lab.

By the time we see her again in Season 2, she's built her own found family: a vigilante group going after those who'd harmed them. She teaches Eleven how to weaponize her feelings—to access anger. However, they don’t stay together. Eleven chooses Hawkins. Kali keeps moving.

Whether we'll hear from her again is unknown, but her life is evidence that not all the numbers were apprehended—or killed.

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009 and 010: Smoke and shadows

Nine and Ten exist largely on the periphery—spoken of, seen, speculated upon. Nine (Jamie) is developed more in the comics than on the Stranger Things TV show. Her ability: fire. Jamie can light and manipulate flames through her mind, which means she is one of the most lethal known test subjects. Her life frequently goes hand in hand with her twin sister, Marcy.

Ten shows up for a fleeting moment in Season 4—young, endowed with remote viewing like Eleven. He is seen working with Brenner in flashbacks. When Vecna's massacre starts, Ten is assumed dead. However, as with so much in Stranger Things, "assumed" isn't always permanent.

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The rainbow room in Stranger Things: Where it all began

The Rainbow Room in Stranger Things was designed to be safe. The walls were colored pastel, the toys plentiful. But for the numbered children, it was a colorful cage. It's the only place where they could interact—where we glimpse flashes of Eleven playing, Kali smiling, the twins sitting quietly in the corner.

For some, it was the best approximation of childhood they would ever have. And then it ended. Vecna destroyed the majority of them in 1979. Eleven lived. So did Kali. The others—like Jamie, Marcy, and perhaps Ten—are still question marks.

But if Stranger Things has shown us anything, it's that nothing is forever hidden. Not in Hawkins, at least.