At the end of Stranger Things episode 9, Max is left blind. He doesn't get to finish his ritual on Max, as a collective effort from the adults in Russia, and the teens in Hawkins and the Upside Down to destroy him, leave him seriously weakened.
After serving as bait for Vecna, she becomes his “final sacrifice,” getting her bones broken and losing her vision during a low point. Once the fight is over, she dies in Lucas' arms, unable to see or feel anything as Eleven looks on from her mindspace.
It is looking likely that Max will be blind as one of the last things she said to Lucas was that she couldn't see anything. She also told him that she couldn't feel "anything", leading many people to think she could also be paralysed.
However, Vecna overpowered Eleven, and began killing Max. Due to the actions of Eleven, Nancy, Steve, and Robin, Max initially survived the attack, though she was blinded and her limbs were broken; for a moment, her heart even stopped.
Technically, Max does die from sustained from Vecna's curse during "The Piggyback" before Eleven uses her powers to restart her friend's heart. Before doing so, Vecna breaks Max's limbs and causes her to go blind before she dies in Lucas' arms.
Yes, Max is brain dead in Stranger Things. When speaking with Josh Horowitz on his podcast, the Duffer Brothers said that although Max is alive, she is "brain dead, blind, and all of her bones are broken."
The reason that Eleven couldn't find Max is actually pretty simple -- Max had already died. That means her soul had already been absorbed into Vecna's consciousness.
Vecna holds off Eleven long enough to brutally attack Max in his signature style—she levitates, her eyes go white and bleed, and he snaps her limbs. Eleven regains her strength and pushes Vecna off before he can complete the job, but the damage is already done.
The fight distracts Lucas from holding onto Max, who levitates under Vecna's thrall. And then it happens: her bones break, her eyes bleed, and she collapses, dead. Max is dead for a minute, but Eleven (who has been psychically piggybacking onto her from Nevada) uses her powers to restart Max's heart.
The Duffer brothers have also confirmed that at the end of Season 4, Max is alive yet "brain dead, blind, and all of her bones are broken." The big mystery is where the redhead is mentally. When Eleven later enters the Void to find Max, all she sees is darkness.
The fan-favorite character ended the season in a coma with her bones broken and eyes blinded at the hands of Vecna. Max technically died for one whole minute before Eleven revived her friend, but Eleven's powers weren't enough to bring Max fully back to life.
Eleven's Life-Saving Decision
Refusing to allow Max to die after their battle with Vecna, Eleven pulls out the stops to save her life. As Lucas begs Max to stay alive, cradling her in his arms, Eleven uses just enough power to get Max's heart beating again.
Why Did Vecna Go After Max? As Vecna continued to go after young victims in order to open more portals, he set his sights on Max Mayfield, since she was investigating the deaths of Chrissy and another student named Fred Benson with help from her friends (including Dustin, Steve, and her boyfriend Lucas).
In episode 7, Vecna is revealed to be Henry Creel (played as a youngster by Raphael Luce), the son of Victor Creel (Robert Englund) and his wife Virginia (Tyner Rushing) shown in the 1950s flashbacks.
Based on all the gut-wrenching and action-heavy trailers for Stranger Things season 4 volume 1, it looks like Max, played by Fear Street actress Sadie Sink, now has mind powers while Eleven, played by Enola Holmes' Millie Bobby Brown, still does not.
Max's most frequently used power is the ability to reverse the flow of time; she can comfortably rewind time several seconds to a few minutes.
As we know, Vecna is actually a man of many names, including 001, Peter Ballard and Henry Creel. We saw Henry and Alice together as children briefly in a flashback and it is believed that Henry killed his sister along with his mother.
"I don't want to die. I'm not ready," Max cries as she succumbs to her wounds — even if only for a minute.
However, within the red smoke of Vecna's Mind Lair, it wasn't the song itself that saved her, but the memories it conjured up. What broke through to Max was the happy, loving memories of her friends, particularly Lucas and Eleven, and these were what truly allowed her to break free of Vecna's grasp and escape.
Instead of escaping Vecna's Mind Lair by hearing her favorite song, Nancy is actually released by Vecna himself. Her freedom comes with a price: He gives her a vision of his plans for Hawkins and tells her to pass that message on to Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown).
He sent fragments of the Creel House flying at Max in a last-ditch attempt to stop her, but it was too late: she had returned to reality. After surviving the attack, Max listened to the song at all times to protect herself from Vecna.
Max attempts to hold on, telling Lucas that she's "not ready to die" but she succumbs to her injuries and ends up dying in Lucas's arms.
Max's death was used a device to push Murphy toward killing Josh in the series finale. Max didn't need to die to wrap up the story this way. Sure, Murphy needed to have a complicated place to land.
Max later regains his memories when he stumbles across the bullet Liz was shot with when she returned to Roswell. Max explains that he never liked mint and asked for peanut the first time Liz served him; she misheard and served him mint.