With seven super-sized episodes dropping last Friday, the majority of Stranger Things fans have already binged the first volume of season four. But having blasted through the new half-season so quickly, a lot of folks might’ve missed an intriguing new addition to Eleven’s wardrobe that it turns out holds a deeper significance. In the earlier episodes, Milly Bobby Brown’s superpowered heroine is shown to be wearing a ring on her right hand.
If you did spot the ring while binging, though, you were probably confused as El’s never been one for jewelry before and it’s never explained on screen where this mysterious accessory comes from. Netflix has now confirmed the backstory behind it, however, in an informative tweet. It turns out that the ring is “a gift from Mike that he gave to her in between seasons 3 and 4.”
This is a cute detail for several reasons. For one, it acts as a follow-up to a minor plot-thread from season three which saw Finn Wolfhard’s Mike desperately trying to find something nice to buy for his girlfriend at the mall — now we know he eventually found the perfect gift. What’s more, it’s also touching as Mike and El aren’t in a great place in their relationship this season so the ring serves as a sweet reminder of when things were happier between them.
At the beginning of season four, El and Mike are 2000 miles apart following the former’s move to California with the Byers family. They do eventually reunite when Mike drops by for spring break, but it becomes clear that Mike has been distancing himself from El and has stopped writing “I love you” in his letters. We’ll find out if the couple we all thought were endgame can be saved when Stranger Things 4 returns to Netflix for its second volume — consisting of two feature-length episodes, one of which is 2 hours and 30 minutes long (!) — on July 1.