Stranger Things 2 Episode 7 Review – “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”

Stranger Things 2 Episode 7 “Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister”
Written by Justin Doble
Directed by Rebecca Thomas
Premiered October 27, 2017 on Netflix

The first scene of Stranger Things 2‘s premiere episode is a fascinating one; the appearance of another young woman with telekinetic powers (one clearly connected to Eleven’s lineage at Hawkins Lab) is a world-shifting moment for the series, one that wildly expands its world, and in particular, the possibility space to explore Hawkins Lab, Dr. Brenner, and how the survivors of his experiments find their way in the world after. And then for six episodes, Stranger Things 2 does nothing with it – until “The Lost Sister”, a momentum-killing hour that brings in another super-powered child into the fold, for a story that alludes to ideas of power, revenge, and how trauma reverberates through a life, only with a script too dull and leaden to bring these ideas to life, resulting in one of the most ill-conceived standalone episodes of the 2010s.

One can appreciate what “The Lost Sister” is aiming for, by building out Eleven’s backstory and examining what might happen to someone with similar powers, who never received the empathy and friendship Eleven experienced after breaking out of Hawkins Lab in season one. Though Eleven’s certainly had her share of negative experiences – and as we see when she learns to channel her power through anger, more mature feelings of jealousy and longing making their way into her emotional landscape – the life Eight/Kali has lived stands in stark contrast, making her a good theoretical parallel to explore.

Instead, “The Lost Sister” coughs up a handful of laughable ’80s punk iconography, as if an AI was fed Streets of Rage levels and told to make a Stranger Things episode out of it; there’s mohawked anarchists with switchblades, a massive black dude who is a softy named Funshine… for a series that has shown some incredibly fun, memorable ways to pull the levers of nostalgia with its audience, “The Lost Sister” and Kali’s crew feels like empty homage, caricatures thrown together to form a superficial pastiche of a punk gang – one led by a young woman with psychic abilities and a penchant for some of the most wooden dialogue Stranger Things has offered to date.

How Kali embodies her ethos of revenge is rendered pointless by the unbelievably leaden dialogue she’s handed, which leads to multiple scenes where a wide-eyed Eleven staring at Kali while she explicitly explains her ethos, talking about being a unifier for the people “society left behind”, exacting her anger on former Hawkins Labs employees by manipulating other people into helping her kill them. She’s just not a compelling or dynamic character in any way, someone whose edginess is supposed to push Eleven to a darker, more mature place, but ends up just feeling like a well-budgeted cosplaying section that ends with Eleven rocking a goofy slicked back hairdo and eyeshadow combo.

It also doesn’t help that it is a total momentum killer for the story of Stranger Things 2; there’s nothing materially gained here except Eleven learning she can be more powerful by accessing her emotions (and specifically, learning the power of her negative emotions, something that will play into Eleven’s powers in later seasons). But boy, there could’ve been a dozen different ways to do this – even ones that keep Eleven isolated from the rest of the cast for the entire season, a mistake that compounds upon itself the more time she spends with this band of cartoonish vagabonds.

There’s even untapped potential in how this story approaches its ethos of love and family versus the forces of evil, but “The Lost Sister” would rather focus on a character who takes advantage of everyone around her, then plays the victim when she ends up alone, destitute and unhappy, despite the general success she’s had in vanquishing her targets. Kali is just not an engaging character, in any sense of the word – toss in the aforementioned explaining she’s constantly doing as they sulk around and plan their crimes against former Hawkins employees, and it’s no surprise this is roundly considered the worst, most grating episode of the season (and for many, the series) – and knowing the series was spineless enough to drop this entire developed subplot based on the audience’s negative reaction to it and never mention it again, makes trying to get involved in the episode’s standalone set of stakes and emotional arcs almost impossible to invest in.

“The Lost Sister” is a great idea executed terribly, a bad episode placed in an incredibly unfavorable position in the season’s progression, a completely pointless hour of two-dimensional characters and one-dimensional ideas that completely stalls out season two, just as it was beginning to hit its dramatic crescendo in Hawkins. Though the ambition is notable, “The Lost Sister” is an enormous misfire on all fronts, an undercooked, throwaway episode with no bearing on either Eleven or the story of Stranger Things – one that nonetheless reminds Eleven of her power and what drives her, but in the most uninspired, lifeless way possible.

Grade: D-

Other thoughts/observations:

• I haven’t watched this episode since 2017, and I forgot how much of it is really just “Kali gives speeches in a warehouse” scenes.
  
• Eleven suddenly being able to just casually tap into the void is not a big piece of story, but for some reasons it bugs me more than the large majority of nonsensical B.S. in this episode.
  
• This episode really just ends with Kali in the middle of a shootout with the police… and we never see or hear about them again. Had Kali been a more compelling character, this would actually make for a kind of powerful bit of storytelling… but it’s not, and the series avoids anything that has to do with this episode like a plague moving forward. Which almost makes the whole endeavor stranger, right?
  
• Kali does mention that Brenner is most likely alive – was it worth the other 45 minutes to get there? Methinks nay.