Mileven

Mileven is the het ship between Jane "Eleven" Hopper and Mike Wheeler from the Stranger Things fandom.

Season 1
As Eleven ran for her life from a government laboratory tucked away in Hawkins, Indiana, Mike, Dustin, and Lucas find her in the pouring rain, in the woods while looking for their missing party member, Will Byers.

Mike was not aware of her telekinetic abilities when he decided to bring her into his home. As they noticed "weird" qualities about her, they questioned her upbringing, wondering why she isn't talking or why she has a shaved head. Dustin and Lucas were hesitant of Mike letting a strange girl stay the night despite his compassionate nature. When the boys left, Mike sat down with her and started talking to Eleven in hopes she would open up a little bit. When he asked her what her name was, she showed him her "011" tattoo. Instead of judging her for it, he was impressed and suggests they call her "El" for short.

At school, Dustin and Lucas start to make fun of Mike because they believe he is starting to have a crush on Eleven. As they continue to make fun of him, Troy Walsh and James Dante come of to them and start making fun of Will, which results in Mike getting a scab on his chin. When they all go to meet Eleven again, she questions why Mike has a scar on his chin. At first he just says that its not a big deal but then soon tells her what happened and calls Troy and James "mouthbreathers" which throughout the rest of the episode she refers to them as that. Mike tells her that he didn't want to tell her because he was afraid she would think of him as weak. She tells him that she understands and gives him a small smile. He gets a little shocked since this is the first time he's seen her smile but he smiles back.

As the journey went on for a bit longer, Eleven and Mike became extremely close after Hopper and Joyce set off to go find Will and save him from the upside down after Eleven had seen him in physic visions. While everyone else goes to either fight the Demogorgon or get Will the boys and Eleven stay in Hawkins Middle School. Mike tells Eleven after they defeat the bad men and the Demogorgon, Eleven would be able to come home with Mike, where Mike's mom could take care of her. Eleven mistakes Mike for being her brother, but Mike goes on to try and explain what it would be like instead. Fumbling with his words, he decides to kiss her instead. She is stunned, but happy.

Going to confront the Demogorgon, and Eleven's powers drained, they take her to a classroom. Mike promises to take Eleven to the Snowball once everything is over. The Demogorgon stops them, though, and Eleven says a final goodbye before sacrificing herself and being taken to the Upside Down.

Season 2
During this season Michael is still mournful over the disappearance of Eleven and tries to contact her through the supercomm often. He spoke to her every night for comfort and in the hopes that she was listening or would return. Eleven also tried to communicate with him, but due to Jim Hoppers orders (her adoptive father) she was not allowed to make direct contact to him. For his own safety and her own.

Eleven becomes rebellious and decides to leave the cabin to see Mike at school. Upon her arrival she finds Mike, she is behind the glass door of the gymnasium and is cheerful to see him but then she spots Max, she misinterprets the scene and becomes jealous. Using her telekinesis she throws Max off her skateboard and leaves upset, questioning whether he was still waiting for her. Mike immediately suspects that it was Eleven and rushes out to find her, but she has already left.

The two reunite at the end of episode eight, Mike sobbing while Eleven makes a badass entrance through the front door after killing a ring of demodogs circling the Byers house. Before Eleven leaves to close the upside down, the two attempt to kiss, but Hopper interrupts them.

After fighting the monsters from the upside down, the two go to the Hawkins Middle School Dance, the Snow Ball, together. Mike and Eleven kiss while slow dancing. They are finally reunited but the scene pans out to the mindflayer watching, which some have interpreted as troublesome foreshadowing for the couple.

Season 3
The season starts off with the two in a good place. As we later learn from Hopper, the two have been seeing each other every day for the past six months. The two are kissing in Eleven's room and Hopper sees them through a crack in the door. This causes the two to quickly pretend they are reading. They joke about it as Mike rides home.

Mike's friends tease him about the amount of time he is spending with Eleven, both at the mall, and when Dustin comes back home from camp. Mike takes Eleven home early, leaving the gang. The two once more make out in Eleven's room, when Hopper comes in to talk to set boundaries. He instead scares Mike off, causing him to lie to Eleven, in which Max prompts Eleven to "dump his ass". This leaves Mike wondering what he has done, causing him to call girls "the female species", which Eleven hears while spying on Mike, Lucas, and Will in the void. The two are not far from each other, as Eleven is sad that her and Mike broke up, even telling Max Mike was her first boyfriend.

After getting a code red, Eleven and Max meet up with the boys, where Eleven and Mike get into an argument at the pool. Mike tells her how she is the most important thing to him, but Eleven tells him off for a few things, and eventually tells him she makes her own rules. They eventually make up after Eleven is almost choked to death by Billy and Mike puts his life on the line to save her although Eleven was so tired and drained she pulled herself together to save Mike and then the two share a heartwarming moment with a bag of M&Ms.

With the final battle approaching, Eleven goes to spy on Billy when Max and Mike get into a heated argument, where Mike blurts out that he can't lose Eleven because he loves her, leaving everyone with their jaws to the floor. Eleven comes in and he brushes it off. After yet another brush with death, Mike carries Eleven (with Max) to a convenience store where the gang breaks in to heal her. They share yet another moment where Mike tells her he hates that they broke up even though by now they got back together. She agrees, and he tells her "blank makes people crazy", but she doesn't get it.

During the final battle, he watches as she removes part of the Mind Flayer from her leg. Billy later attacks Mike, Eleven, and Max, causing Eleven to be captured. After defeating the Mind Flayer, the two are reunited, sharing a hug.

With Hopper's death, Eleven has to move with the Byers. While packing, Mike excitedly talks about the two getting to see each other. Eleven brings up that she did hear Mike confess his feelings for her, she tells him that she loves him too. They share a goodbye kiss, and a few more tearful goodbye hugs and kisses before she gets into the moving truck, leaving Mike and her friends behind in Hawkins.

Season 4
By the spring of 1986, Mike and El keep contact through letters. Mike almost arrives late at high school because he was reading a letter from El and she has made a box shrine full of letters and pictures of Mike. However, El and Mike have begun suffering from communication problems; El has been lying about being bullied by a girl named Angela and struggling in school, while Mike has continued to struggle saying he loves El, ending his letters with "From, Mike". Nevertheless, they are looking forward to seeing each other again.

When Mike arrives in California, he and El kiss and hug tightly. Then Mike presents El with flowers he handpicked from Hawkins. Mike explains he knows she loves yellow and purple so he tried to make the bouquet a “70/30 thing”. El is very happy at first but then she gets visibly disappointed that the letter in the flowers read "From, Mike" yet again. However, she hides her emotions and tells Mike the flowers are perfect. Then she explains she has the whole day planned. El continues to lie and say she has friends she wants Mike to meet but that day she wants to take him to the town's roller rink, Rink-O-Mania and that she wants the day to be about just Mike and her. Happy to hear this, Mike kisses El’s temple.

At the roller rink, Mike and El skate together with Will. Mike says he’s so bad at it and that he looks like Bambi on ice, but El encourages him. Later, El is unexpectedly confronted by Angela and her posse, who take advantage of El's lies that they're friends by taking her to the center of the rink and publicly humiliating her. Mike, confused, does his best to stop the situation, but it proves futile when one of Angela's friends throws a milkshake on El and causes her to fall to the floor. El, embarrassed and crying, skates away from Mike, who screams for her as the crowd laughs at her and she hides. Mike and Will scour the rink looking for El only to find her when they hear Angela's screams. They run to El and discover she had clocked Angela in the face with a roller skate and caused her nose to split open. Mike, shocked, in the heat of the moment, asks what she had done.

After being taken home and having dinner with Joyce and Murray, Jonathan and Argyle discuss the roller rink incident as an "accident" and tell a confused Joyce and Murray that Angela will be fine. Mike mutters that she didn't look fine, causing El to glare at him and storm off to her bedroom. The next morning, Mike goes into El's bedroom with Eggos for breakfast and asks her why she didn't tell him she was being bullied. He attempts to comfort her and say he knows what it's like, but El shuts his argument down and tells him no matter where she goes, everyone looks at her like she's a monster, even him. Mike says that's not true, but El reminds Mike about the way he reacted at the Rink-O-Mania. Mike tells El he was caught off-guard in the situation and it doesn't take away how much "he cares about her". El then asks if Mike doesn't love her anymore. Mike asks who said that he didn't, causing El to tell him that he never says it. He claims that he does say it, but El responds that he can't even write it, presenting him all of his letters that end with "From, Mike". Mike tells a tearful El that she shouldn't let the "mouth-breathers" ruin them and her self-esteem and that they’re nobodies and she's a superhero. El says she's not a superhero anymore. Their conversation ends unexpectedly when the police arrive to arrest El for assaulting Angela. As she's taken away, Mike promises El through the police car window that he will fix this and get her out.

Due to Joyce being out of town, El is sent off to juvenile hall, but is picked up by Dr. Sam Owens and his agents. The agents arrive at the Byers house to tell Jonathan, Will, and Mike that El is being trained to get her powers back to fight a new evil in Hawkins. The lead agent gives Mike a letter from El that tells him she's gone to become a superhero again, ending with "From, El".

The next day, as the boys are under house arrest to keep them safe, Mike sulks over the letter, causing Will and Jonathan to make a plan to get back to Hawkins through Jonathan's best friend, Argyle. With the help of Suzie Bingham, Dustin's girlfriend, they discover that El is in Nevada. They all proceed to drive there.

When Mike spots El, she has a shaved head again and is lying in the middle of the desert. As El takes down a helicopter with her newly-equipped powers, Mike jumps out of the van and runs up to her, calling her name. El is caught off-guard but happily hugs Mike as they press their foreheads together. She asks him if it’s really him and he reassures her that he’s there.

Once they escape in Argyle's van, Eleven tells Mike and Will that they have to get back to Hawkins immediately, due to Vecna's attacks. They later stop at a gas station, and Jonathan frantically calls many airlines, trying to see if there is a way El can get back to Hawkins. El realizes that she can "piggyback" in order to fight Vecna. She explains that she will need a sensory deprivation tank in order to enhance her abilities. The group proceeds to go to a pizza shop, because there is enough salt there to create a tank for Eleven. Mike makes her special goggles that block out light. They sit together at the shop, and Mike makes El giggle after he jokes about "looking so cool" with the glasses on. Eleven then holds his hands, and talks about how she missed him. He says that he missed her as well, and begins to talk about his feelings for her, but they are then interrupted by Argyle, who places a pizza on the table, telling Mike and Eleven to try it. Mike immediately refuses, due to there being the pineapple as a topping. El tries the pizza, and says that it's "really good". El and Argyle force Mike to try the pizza, shoving a slice in his face, and telling him to "try before you deny". In the subtitles, you can see that he admits it's good after trying it.

Later, while Eleven is in the sensory deprivation tank fighting Vecna, she starts choking due to being trapped by tentacles in Vecna's mind layer. In order to help El get out of it, Mike holds her hand and starts talking to her. Will encourages him to continue, stating that he’s the heart of the group. Mike finally says that he loves her. In the Void, El becomes emotional when Mike tells her he has always loved her, and that he was afraid to say it out of fear that if El ever left him, it would make that day hurt even more. He goes on to say that his life started the day they met in the woods, and that he loves her no matter what, calling her “his superhero" and encouraging her to fight. Motivated, El temporarily takes down Vecna. Mike tearfully waits for her to wake up until she finally does. Later on, El and Mike lean on one another as they look over a comatose Max. Mike is the only person El talked to after that.

Fanon
A lot of people love this ship because of their positive interactions. The ship sailed at the end of the first season, when Mike asked El to go to the Snow Ball with him and kissed her. A common trope in fanfiction about Mileven is hurt/comfort, where Mike comforts El about her tragic past or they comfort each other about the trauma they have endured together.

On AO3, there are currently over 5k works under the Eleven/Mike Wheeler tag, making Mileven the most written ship for Eleven and the second most written ship for Mike. The ship is also the fourth most written ship under the Stranger Things (TV 2016) tag, only coming fourth after Harringrove, Steddie and Byler.

Fandom
FAN FICTION
 * Eleven/Mike tag on FanFiction.Net
 * Eleven/Mike tag on FanFiction.Net

INSTAGRAM

TUMBLR

ART

TIKTOK
 * Mileven tag on TikTok
 * Mike x Eleven tag on TikTok

Trivia

 * The kiss that had taken place during the Snow Ball in season 2 was not scripted and was in fact requested by the actress Millie Bobby Brown.
 * In season 4 Eleven wears a ring that Mike gave her as a gift in between seasons 3 and 4.
 * During season 4 El signed off a letter to Mike with 'from El' likely in response to the fact that he could not say or write it throughout the season.