Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers have said they would love to redo the show’s notorious Season 2 episode “The Lost Sister,” but the rumors that it was supposed to be a backdoor pilot for a spinoff are “bulls**t.”
The pair behind the hit Netflix show looked back on the highs and lows of their time in Hawkins, Indiana, during an interview with Josh Horowitz on Happy, Sad, Confused. While reflecting on the moments they’d love to take another crack at, both Matt and Ross Duffer gave an unsurprising answer for the Stranger Things episode they knew needed more love: Season 2, Episode 7.
“I think the mistake was this idea of a bottle episode,” Matt Duffer said. “I think if we had threaded it in more organically throughout the season, it would have worked. It wasn’t anybody’s fault except ours. I just would have approached how we integrated Kali differently.”
For those unaware, the seventh episode of Stranger Things’ nine-episode second season pulls Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown) out of Hawkins and into the streets of Chicago, where she meets a group of outcasts and soon-to-be friends. Among the new crew is Kali, a girl who happens to share connections to Eleven’s past and also possesses supernatural abilities.
It’s a bottle episode that has lived in infamy since it first premiered in October 2017. While the Duffer Brothers now admit the episode should have been handled differently, they don’t think the idea should have been scrapped entirely.
“Matt and I got so drawn into getting those last two episodes of Season 2 written,” Ross Duffer added, “and prepping because we were directing them, that it just got lost in the shuffle.”
The Duffer Brothers went on to clarify that they knew even before the episode premiered that fans would find the integration of Season 2, Episode 7 a bit clunky. That said, Matt Duffer admitted the poor reception still “hit harder” than he expected. The response to “The Lost Sister” got so heated, in fact, that the pair walked into Season 3 “bummed” because so many fans remained locked on to their disappointment with that one 40-ish-minute episode specifically.
The Stranger Things Season 2 episode remains one of the least liked across the show’s 40+ episodes. Some even speculated that Season 2, Episode 7 was originally meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for a spin-off. Now, nearly 10 years after its premiere, Matt Duffer wants to clear the air.
“First of all, let me just clear up some bulls**t out on the internet,” he said. “There’s so much bulls**t, we’d be here all day, but that was never designed as like a spinoff. That’s bulls**t. That’s not true. That’s gross. We would not do that.”
All these years later, the Stranger Things crew found themselves with fresh disappointment with the show after it came to an end with its Season 5 finale on December 31, 2025. Some fans were so displeased with the finale that they came up with theories about a secret episode that never came to be.
For now, the main Stranger Things story has come to an end. For more, you can see why some have hope the Duffer Brothers will reveal more about the characters of Hawkins in a few decades. You can also read up on everything you need to know about the Stranger Things: Tales from ‘85 spinoff.
Michael Cripe is a freelance writer with IGN. He’s best known for his work at sites like The Pitch, The Escapist, and OnlySP. Be sure to give him a follow on Bluesky (@mikecripe.bsky.social) and Twitter (@MikeCripe).
