Stranger Things Season 2 Episode 7 Recap – The Lost Sister

Eleven’s Quest

Terry’s memories flash into El in pieces, repeating into a loop that doesn’t stop. She remembers the rainbow room and sees a girl in the lab that looks different from her. Perhaps this is what Terry wants her to do, to find her.

Becky then shows El the files that Terry accumulated in her quest to find other children that were in the same program as her. Eleven sees a newspaper clipping of the girl and tries to locate her, but fails. That night, El tries to search for her again and finds her. She goes to tell her aunt Becky but discovers her calling someone to report her disappearance, so she steps out after taking some money.

Eleven takes the bus to see Kali in Illinois. She walks the streets and sees the high-rise buildings all around her. After some time she reaches an area full of homeless people camping outdoors and lighting fires in barrels. Finally, she reaches the place where Kali and her friends are living in. She steps inside and finds four people gathering by a fire.

El says she’s looking for her sister and shows them the picture. They recognize it as a young Kali, which makes the guy named Axel wary that she managed to find them. El promises that no one else knows but Axel isn’t satisfied and threatens her with a knife to tell the truth. Suddenly Axel starts seeing spiders in her hand and panics to try to take them off.

Sister

Kali, who’s on the stairs tells him he’s a bad dancer. The others show Kali her picture and she asks El how she got it. El says it’s from Mama and she saw Kali in the rainbow room. Axel calls her schizo and tries to pick up the knife, but El grabs it with her mind, startling everybody.

Kali asks her name and they both show the tattoos on their wrist. They give each other a hug, regarding themselves as sisters. El tells Kali her current predicament. Kali says Hopper is naïve for thinking that the people at Hawkins would allow them to roam free, as they will always see them as monsters. Kali explains her gift of creating illusions in other people’s minds. It doesn’t have to be scary, like the spiders she showed Axel. Kali brings out a glowing butterfly from her palm, and adds that El’s power is a gift too.

Kali lets El share her room that night and expresses that she now feels whole, and perhaps Terry was leading El here to make her feel at home.

Later, Kali tells her gang how El managed to find her with just an image alone, citing that they can use her gift to do another job tomorrow. Mick tells her it’s too dangerous right now but Kali insists.

Apologies

El hears Hopper’s apologetic message through the radio in her dreams when Kali wakes her up. She takes her downstairs and introduces her to Axel, Dottie, Mick the strategist and Funshine the warrior. El checks Funshine’s wrist and doesn’t see number. Kali explains that the others are not like them, but similar in the way that they are outcasts who fight the bad men.

Kali shows El a collection of IDs of the people who hurt them in the past and led them to this situation. They would fight back and kill them, and ask El if she could do the same. El tells them she’s killed before, especially those that hurt her. Kali takes her outside and asks her to carry an old train cart. El fails at first, but Kali reminds her of the time she lifted a van once and asks her to remember that anger.

El tries once more, remembering the awful things she experienced before and finally the train moves closer to them. The other gang members see this and cheer for her. They then show El to a room displaying their possible targets. El sees the picture of the guy who hurt Mama and picks him. Terry says that man did even more. He proved to be hard to track previously but not anymore. They find the man’s apartment and mobilize.

The others give El a make over and call her new look Bitchin’. They all ride the van and listen to punk rock as they head to their destination. They stop by a supermarket and distract the clerk with an illusion before stealing their wares. The clerk threatens them with a gun but El takes care of him and they speed off.

Fighting Bad Men

They arrive at the target’s location at night. El tells them he’s alone watching TV and they all don their masks to get to him. El unlocks the door and they all come in. Kali and El remove their masks, and the man named Ray claims he doesn’t remember them until they use their powers. Ray tries to bargain by telling them Brenner’s location but El says Papa is dead. Kali adds that Jane can find him if she wants. El chokes Ray until she sees his family picture. Axel and Dottie also see two kids huddled in the room nearby who already called the cops.

Kali takes her gun but El throws it away to the window. Back in the car, Kali scolds her, saying that she made her own choice and she shouldn’t stop her from doing so.

Back at their hideout, Kali sits down and tells Eleven that she was just like her before. El argues that there were kids in there, but Kali says they were also kids when they were harmed. Kali explained that she was able to escape the lab using her gifts but her home and family were lost to her. That’s why she decided to use her gift to take revenge on those who hurt them. She asks El to take revenge on Brenner, but El insists that he’s dead. Kali shows an illusion of Brenner to El and urges her to take care of her pain. The pain she’s feeling is rotting inside of her and it eventually will kill her. Eleven screams for Kali to get out of her head and the lights flicker.

Kali tells El that this isn’t a prison. She can return to Hopper or stay and avenge her mother.

A Choice

That night, the cops conduct a raid on their hideout. El touches her shirt and remembers the pleasant memories she had with Mike and Hopper. She searches for them and finds that Hopper and Mike are at Hawkins lab, with an evil entity trying to threaten their lives.

Suddenly, the cops barge into their hideout. Kali makes them disappear from the room and they manage to slip outside, but there are more cops on the lookout and find them. A shootout ensues and they scramble to hide behind the bus. Axel tells Kali to do something, and she constructs a huge barrier to conceal them. They all go inside the van but El refuses, saying her friends are in danger. Kali reminds her that this is Terry’s intention, and that her friends cannot save her.

El says she’ll be the one saving them and slips off to another alleyway. Kali’s gang speeds off to another road, chased by gunfire as the wall collapses.

At the bus, an old woman asks El if she’s okay, as she’s been staring at the window sadly all this time. She joins her and tells her she’s too young to travel alone. El explains that she’s going to her friends.

Our Thoughts

This side quest seemed frivolous at first, but it was still enjoyable. Rating: 3.8/5