Stranger Things Season 5 has an unenviable task; to bring a satisfying end to all the countless plots and character arcs from the first four seasons. Stranger Things has defined the last decade of streaming TV, and it’s essential the Duffer brothers stick the landing. As Game of Thrones proved, a poor final season has the chance to completely change the way even the best TV show is remembered. The pressure on Season 5 is intense.
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To be fair, the Duffer brothers have made some smart calls. Vecna has been retconned as Stranger Things‘ true villain all along, meaning the entire show has really all been about trying to drive back Vecna’s invasion from the Upside Down. A powerful psychic, he also his powers were used as to explore grief and consequences, continuing other characters’ stories; Season 5 can continue that trend. But there’s one great misstep from Stranger Things‘ past that isn’t tied up in Vecna, and it needs to be resolved.
“The Lost Sister” Is Still Stranger Things’ Biggest Mistake
Looking back, it’s easy to see what the Duffer brothers were trying to do with Stranger Things Season 2. They wanted to further explore Eleven’s powers and history, and they did this by giving her a counterpart in another Hawkins Lab survivor, who called herself Kali. Season 2, episode 7 shone a spotlight on Kali, positioning her as the Magneto to Eleven’s Professor X, leader of a group who were very different to the Hawkins kids. Kali had come to hate Dr. Brenner, and sought revenge on everybody who’d ever worked at the lab.
There are a lot of good ideas in Stranger Things Season 2, episode 7, “The Lost Sister.” The Duffer brothers tried to invert the Luke Skywalker formula from The Empire Strikes Back, with Kali serving as an unlikely mentor to Eleven. They were also keen to expand beyond Hawkins to show the wider world they wanted to build. Unfortunately, viewers weren’t impressed; the bottle episode deviated from the show’s overall tone and style in too abrupt a manner. Kali has been largely forgotten (although there’s a nod to her in Dr. Brenner’s crossword puzzle in the Season 4 premiere).
Appropriately enough, Stranger Things Season 4 repeated the experiments seen in “The Lost Sister” – but rather better. Like “The Lost Sister,” Season 4 sent Eleven on a quest to a mentor who would teach her how to access her powers at a higher level. Meanwhile, various subplots took the cast and characters away from Hawkins, with Joyce, Hopper, and Murray even winding up in the USSR. This time, though, it was done as part of an overarching narrative told at the same time as the Hawkins story, and the tone and style was consistent. It was a remarkable success.
Can Stranger Things Season 5 Fix The Show’s Kali Mistake?
Season 5 isn’t quite the end of the road; an animated Stranger Things spinoff is in the works. But this, too, will be focused around the Hawkins kids. But the Duffer brothers are leaving Netflix, eager to head to the big screen, which means Season 5 is their last chance to fully redeem their past mistakes. Season 4 already proved they’ve figured out how to fix the formula, but they also need to deal with Kali as a character. She has to make her return.
What role would Kali take? It’s entirely possible she’d become an antagonist, perhaps part of a “Cult of Vecna” teased back in the Season 4 premiere. That would certainly feel like the logical direction for her character to take, continuing to make her the yin to Eleven’s yang, the Magneto to her Professor X. Alternatively, to continue the X-Men parallels that have been part of Stranger Things since the beginning, Magneto has often sided with the X-Men against greater threats – so it’s possible Kali will team up with Eleven in the end.
One thing’s for sure, though. Stranger Things Season 5 needs to tie up all the show’s various loose ends, and Kali is the biggest one of all. To ignore her would be to implicitly admit that she was too big a mistake, too great a misstep. It would be so much more satisfying for the Duffer brothers to find a way to weave her into the final season.
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