Stranger Things wrapped up at the start of 2026, but Matt and Ross Duffer are still being asked about it. Frankly, they’ll probably never escape their creation, especially with Netflix’s determination to wring every last drop of value out of the franchise. While the finale continues to be controversial (Can we all just agree that Eleven is dead and move on?), the Duffers actually name a much earlier episode as the one they wish they could do over.
That said, the episode in question does tie into the big Stranger Things endgame arc. It’s episode 207, “The Lost Sister,” which sees Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) flee on a side quest to Chicago, where she meets Kali (Linnea Berthelsen), aka Eight, a fellow Hawkins Lab escapee with psychic powers. While there’s some instant trauma bonding, Eleven eventually chooses to return to Hopper and her friends rather than lend her talents to Kali’s revenge scheme.
Their clashing approaches to problem-solving resurface when Kali pops up during Stranger Things‘ final season. But speaking to Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, the Duffers revealed that if they could go back in time, they’d love to have a “second shot” at crafting “The Lost Sister.”
“First of all, let me just clear up some bullshit out on the internet […] it was never designed as like a spin-off shoot,” Matt Duffer said. “That’s gross. We would not do that. But I think the mistake was this idea of a bottle episode. I think if we had threaded it in more organically throughout the season, it would have worked. So it wasn’t anybody’s fault except ours. I think I just would have approached how we integrated Kali differently.”
Added Ross Duffer, “And Matt and I got so drawn into getting those last two episodes of season two written and prepping them because we were directing them. [Episode seven] just got lost in the shuffle.”
Ross also pointed out that they were “racing” to finish season two, which was “the only season that came out in an appropriate amount of time,” nodding to the longer gaps that cropped up between subsequent installments.
The experience of making “The Lost Sister” and the way it was received taught the Duffers an important lesson: Stranger Things wasn’t a show suited to bottle episodes. That said, they also tried to move on from the experience rather than retreating to a more familiar approach.
“I still remember coming in with the writers when we were on season three, and we’re all a little bummed about it, because we’re like, ‘It feels like so many people are talking about this 40 minutes, and we did eight hours,” Ross said. “But it kind of emboldened us. We were doing a big swing, and we knew it was a risk […] We all sat down and said, ‘We can’t be afraid now.’ Because then the show […] it’ll just be stale. It’ll be like, rinse and repeat.”
“So then we went and, you know, season three is a crazy season […] We were like, let’s keep pushing the show […] It’s not all going to work, but let’s see what works and what doesn’t.”
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