I have not exactly been loving season 5 of Stranger Things, at least in these first four episodes that make up Part 1 of the release of the final season. I can discuss that further, but spoilers follow from here.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been some cool parts of Stranger Things this time around. I liked the reveal of the Merida-looking Max trapped in Henry’s memory world. It is hard to refute that the final sequence of Will finally getting powers and being able to insta-kill demigorgons wasn’t awesome. The rest of it? The idea of Henry abducting children one by one with his creepy persona and the gang fighting back with Home Alone traps has not been great. Some of the acting is…questionable. But my least favorite part is what the show did near the end with Eleven and Hopper.
Their entire storyline is building to the reveal of how the army is generating El’s “kryptonite,” some sort of psychic sonar blast that erases her powers and makes her writhe in agony. They attach it to trucks, they rig their base with it. Unless you shoot every broadcast, it cripples her instantly.
The theory was that the army had actually caught Vecna after he was weakened after the events of season 4, and was using his powers as a weapon to hunt Eleven. That actually kind of seemed like a cool twist, though obviously it would end with Vecna breaking out.
That isn’t what happened, however, and the twist was instead that it’s not Vecna at all, but rather someone you’ll see and go “who?”
That would be Kali Prasad, the character from season 2, episode 7, “The Lost Sister,” who was one of a number of power-having kids who were former experiments like Eleven. Kali was “Eight.” She and her group stalked members of the science team who experimented on them. Eventually, they link up with Eleven, who briefly goes goth and becomes a member of the gang.
The problem is that this episode was awful. It is by far the worst-rated episode of the series with a 6/10 on IMDB, way below almost any other. We know that this episode was meant to be a sort of backdoor pilot for a potential Stranger Things spin-off, likely starring Kali herself, along with her group. It would take place outside of Hawkins, albeit in the same world, but…the reception to this episode killed the idea outright.
Stranger Things – The Lost SIster
Netflix
My question is why the Stranger Things, in its final season, would want to bring back a character from a single, awful episode of the show from season 2, which, and I’m not kidding here, aired eight years ago in 2017 when that season was released. I suppose this means that the show has not totally memory-holed that plotline, which it seemed to want to never talk about again, but now Kali has become one of the most important characters in the series all of a sudden, due to her ability to completely negate Eleven? I mean, now that they’ve found her, hopefully that’s over, but what, she’s just going to join the gang now after eight years? I don’t like it.
The rest of episode 4 was great. I understand why it has a series-best 9.8/10 right now on IMDB, and its final moments in particular were amazing. But this season 2 flashback? I absolutely could have done with that, and it would be weird to suddenly make Kali a big character going forward in these final episodes, though we’re not quite sure what the exact plan is yet.
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