If you haven’t yet watched Season 2, turn away now.
The second season of “Stranger Things” boldly kicks off in the most unfamiliar of ways. Rather than placing us back inside Hawkins, Indiana, the show instead launches into Season 2 by showing us the beginnings of a side story set in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
In PA, we meet up with a group of robbers who are in the midst of a high-speed chase with the police. After they drive under a bridge, the female passenger in the front seat supernaturally makes that bridge collapse on the police cars that are hot on their tail. She wipes blood from her nose. On her wrist, we see the number “008.”
Who is this mysterious woman, who clearly has special powers and presumably has a similar origin story to Eleven? Well, it’s not until Episode 7 that we find out.
The most polarizing episode of “Stranger Things 2” is unquestionably that very episode, titled “The Lost Sister.” Breaking away from the central story of the kids fighting off (and befriending, in Dustin’s case) monsters in Hawkins for a full 45-minutes, “The Lost Sister” is almost entirely set on the mean streets of Chicago, where Eleven meets up with “Eight.”
The Rebecca Thomas-directed episode has a style all its own, in many ways paying tribute to a different kind of ’80s movie than the bulk of “Stranger Things.” Whereas the series often feels like a lost Amblin project from the ’80s, the neon-tinged, graffiti-covered and appropriately titled “The Lost Sister” feels like, well, a punk rock ’80s gang film akin to The Lost Boys.
Eleven, fueled by a message from the catatonic mother she only just met, catches up with Eight and her gang at a time in her life when she just doesn’t feel like she belongs in Hawkins. Hopper, playing the role of her surrogate father, has kept Eleven locked up in a cabin in the woods for a year, leading her to believe that she’ll simply never be able to live like a normal person. But she finds a glimmer of hope in Chicago, initially embracing Eight’s gang as the only real family she may ever be able to have.
Eight, who has the power to mess with minds and make people see things that aren’t real (that bridge never actually collapsed in Episode 1, in other words), quickly takes in Eleven as her “sister,” showing her a whole new world where her powers can be embraced and openly used to, in particular, seek vengeance on the people who have wronged her and her mother. This is alluring to Eleven, who feels like she has finally found a place she can truly call home. And she’s feeling pretty vengeful.
After getting a bitchin’ punk rock makeover and being taught how to properly use and control her powers, Eleven ultimately decides that Eight’s gang is very much not her family. Her family, she realizes, is in Hawkins. Her brief stay in Chicago reminds Eleven what’s really important to her and who she really is, leading to a cathartic revelation. She’s been torn between nature and nurture. In the end, she chooses nurture.
“There’s nothing for you back there. They cannot save you,” Eight tells Eleven, referring to Hawkins. “No,” Eleven responds, as heartwarming clips from Season 1 flash on the screen. “But I can save them.” Later, on the bus back to Hawkins, a kind older woman asks Eleven where she’s headed.
“I’m going to my friends. Going home.”
This standalone episode, which essentially plays out like the pilot of a “Stranger Things” spinoff that we very likely could get in the near future, is the only one in Season 2 that truly dares to expand beyond the familiar, opening up the show’s world for an entirely new look at what’s going on out there. For better or worse, “Stranger Things 2” mostly spends its nine episodes giving us more of the same (I’m not complaining, to be clear), at times to such a noticeable extent that it begins to feel like Season 2 is most nostalgic for, well, Season 1.
But amid *another* new girl joining the group of young friends, Jonathan and Nancy going on *another* adventure together and Joyce decorating her home with *another* unique means of communicating with her lost son, we’re served up “The Lost Girl.” A beautiful, self-contained episode that’s so different it admittedly sticks out from the pack.
Not like a sore thumb, mind you. But like a wonderful breath of fresh air.
“It’s important for Ross [Duffer] and I to try stuff and not feel like we’re doing the same thing over and over again,” co-creator Matt Duffer explained the episode to EW.
Not only does the episode further develop the most important character in the show, providing Eleven with a wonderful arc in just 45-minutes, but it also paves the way for what turns out to be two incredible final episodes of Season 2. It’s because of what happened in Chicago that Eleven returns to Hawkins, reuniting with Mike and once again, much like at the end of Season 1 (hey, I said it was all pretty familiar), saving the day. Only this time, she expertly uses her powers (thanks, Eight) to close the Upside Down for good, putting an end to the nightmare that began when she unwillingly helped open it up in the first place.
More than anything else going on, El’s redemption is the central story of Season 2. And it’s impossible to imagine that story without “The Lost Girl,” which really ties it all together.
It’s a brilliant episode that almost single-handedly elevates Season 2 to greatness.
