Key Season 5 Return Reignites Debate Over Stranger Things’ Most Hated Season 2 Episode
They thought they’d never see her again. Then, against all odds, she walked back into their lives—unleashing relief, disbelief, and urgent questions about what happened.
Stranger Things just dug up one of its most argued-over threads, and yes, it absolutely matters. If you have not watched the new episodes yet, this is your stop.
Spoilers for Stranger Things season 5 follow.
A quick refresher on the 'Lost Sister' detour
Back in season 2, episode 7, Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) kept seeing a girl in her visions and ran off to track her down. That girl was Kali Prasad, aka Number Eight (Linnea Berthelsen). They bonded over shared trauma, Kali taught El to fuel her powers with anger, and then El bounced back to Hawkins, leaving Kali behind. The episode became the show’s most divisive hour by a mile. After that, Kali basically vanished from the series, aside from some season 4 flashbacks.
Season 5 finally pays it off
Cut to season 5, episode 4: once Eleven gets inside Dr. Kay’s lab — Dr. Kay is Linda Hamilton’s character — Kali shows up. No, you are not imagining that. After years of silence and plenty of fans assuming the writers shelved her because of the backlash, she is suddenly back in the mix.
Fans are, predictably, split
- Some folks feel vindicated, calling out the old 'pointless' and 'filler' labels and asking why the show would dedicate a whole episode to something that never mattered. One tweet on November 27, 2025 basically said: how are you feeling now?
- Others are just happy she returned at all, noting it has been ages since season 2 and aside from those season 4 flashbacks, she hadn’t factored in. For them, it is a nice payoff.
- A few were genuinely shocked the writers found a way to fold her back in after she felt so peripheral.
- And then there are the holdouts: 'It was pointless. still is,' and the coldest take of the bunch, 'could have been a voicemail.'
What the Duffers are actually saying
In an interview with EW, the Duffer brothers admitted Kali has been a dangling thread they could not justify revisiting until now. Translation: they tried to bring her back before, but they did not have a story reason to do it. That changes in the final season, and they are not being coy about how much she matters to the endgame.
'Kali was this loose end that we had never really resolved. We’ve talked about bringing her back before, but there was not a narrative or thematic reason to bring her back. As you’ll see in Volume 2, she’s really there. Her reason for being there is very important in terms of Eleven’s journey and also the journey for this story to end.'
So if you wrote off The Lost Sister as a dead-end side quest, the showrunners are basically telling you to hold that thought until Volume 2. Expect Kali to be more than a cameo and directly tied to where Eleven is headed.
Where it lands next
Stranger Things season 5 Volume 1 is streaming now on Netflix. Volume 2 drops on Christmas Day.