This year’s Halloween Horror Nights is an Eleven
The face of Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights may well belong this year to Eleven, the young leading lady of “Stranger Things.” The character, played by actress Millie Bobby Brown, appears all over the souvenir merchandise for the event.
Eleven pops up on T-shirts for $27, lanyards ($11), keychains ($16), a curved magnet with water ($10), baseball caps ($28), a pin with flashing holiday lights ($17), Pez dispensers (alongside “Stranger Things” character Mike for $12.95) and more. She’s on the outside of a mug that has a mouth-wide-open Demogorgon inside ($20).
And that’s just the tip of the Upside Down merch.
Despite the character’s beleaguered background — she’s an escapee from a government facility that basically used her as a psychokinetic science experiment — park visitors can probably relate to one of the series’ more unusual characters, says Robert Thompson, who teaches popculture courses at Syracuse University. Like Eleven and you’re more likely to buy HHN merchandise.
“Nobody can say, ‘Oh, yeah, I had a life just like Eleven’ … but I think there’s enough that one can relate to that she’s sympathetic,” Thompson says, her blossoming romance with Mike and her reaction to unfamiliar surroundings, among them.
“I also think that it’s her more alien qualities as well,” he says, bringing another character seen at Universal Studios in the mix. “I hate to compare her with E.T. — obviously she’s in human form. … None of us had the experience of being abandoned on a distant planet, but at the same time he was a very relatable character.”
Scare actors portraying Eleven also are present in the haunted house maze based on the hit Netflix show. Halloween Horror Nights, an after-hours fright fest, runs on select nights through Nov. 3.