This week it was announced that Netflix prepares an animated television series that will serve to continue expanding the universe of ‘Stranger Things’ beyond its fifth and final season. It is quite clear that the idea is to continue squeezing it until there is no longer a human way to do it, but it should not be forgotten that the series It already had a kind of spin-off in 2017 so horrible that practically all of us prefer to forget about its existence.
The most hated episode of the series
Some readers surely have already realized that I am referring to ‘The Lost Sister’, the seventh episode of the second season of the series. A chapter that was highly criticized at the time for breaking abruptly with what ‘Stranger Things’ was counting for what seemed to be a backdoor pilot, that is, it was intended as a possible starting point for another series located in this universe. . That was never entirely clear, but it was liked so little that the duffer brothers they preferred to bury the episode rather than give it any kind of continuity.
If you don’t remember what happened in ‘The Lost Sister’, I can’t blame you either, but it doesn’t hurt to remember that Eleven was traveling to Chicago, where he met Kali, another young woman who had suffered firsthand from Brenner’s experiments. A strong bond arises between the two and everything leads to a revenge story that becomes more complicated than necessary when the person who is about to be executed reveals that Brenner is still alive. Eventually, Eleven returns to Hawkins with greater control over her powers, while the last we hear of Kali and her gang are on the run from the police.
All you have to do is do a quick online review to be clear that ‘The Lost Sister’ is the least liked episode of the series. For example, on IMDb it has an average score of just 6.1 when none of the rest falls below 7.8. AND in this case there was no suspicion of review bombingbecause it was simply due to its poor reception.
That does not mean that the Duffers’ intentions were good, since at the time they commented that ‘Star Wars’ was the main source of inspiration for the episode. In fact, Matt Duffer He commented the following about it:
We talk a lot about The Empire Strikes Back. We talk about Luke going to Dagobah and meeting Yoda. Also, the idea of a dark Eleven, of an Eleven drawn to the dark side, was an interesting idea. So a lot of that episode was what if Eleven is drawn into this darkness and what can she learn about herself if that’s the case.
For his part, linnea berthelsenthe young actress who gave life to Kali, pointed out that “I took it all from Luke and the relationship with Anakin. The reason why Kali is so angry is also because of love. She wants to believe in another human being. Something has gone really wrong and people have let her down. She is trying what she thinks is the best way to support Eleven. Maybe it’s not the right way to do it, but she’s coming from a good place. And I think it’s the same thing that happens to her with Darth Vader: she believes that she is the right thing to do and she does everything out of love for her mother.“.
Let’s hope that this new spin-off of ‘Stranger Things’ is more successful, but this precedent does not invite us to be very optimistic. If even the Duffers confessed that they were thinking about whether or not it was necessary and concluded that it was essential for the character arc of the character of Millie Bobby Brown. Maybe that was the case, but also that there were many better ways to do it.
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