Stranger Things Season 5 is full of new characters, from the villainous Dr. Kay (Linda Hamilton) to foul-mouthed Derek Turnbow (Jake Connelly). But there’s also an unexpected familiar face in the mix — and not one you might expect.
See, Stranger Things has a consistent habit of bringing back seemingly dead characters. Hopper (David Harbour) could have died in the Starcourt Mall explosion in Season 3, but he wound up in the Soviet Union instead. Dr. Brenner (Matthew Modine) seemed like a goner following his Season 1 encounter with the Demogorgon, but somehow he returned in Season 4. So if Stranger Things Season 5 was going to bring back a character from prior seasons, chances are it would have been someone we lost. Maybe even a fan favorite like Eddie Munson (Joseph Quinn).
Instead, Stranger Things goes the exact opposite route. Season 5 brings back a character who didn’t resonate with fans, who’s only been in one episode, and who’s barely been mentioned since. That character is none other than Kali Prasad (Linnea Berthelsen), aka Eight.
Wait, who’s Eight/Kali again?
Linnea Berthelsen in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
If you haven’t done a full rewatch of Stranger Things in a while, chances are you might not remember Kali. She plays a major role in the controversial Season 2 episode “The Lost Sister,” in which Eleven (Mille Bobby Brown) journeys to Chicago and teams up with a gang of outcasts to get revenge on the Hawkins Lab employees.
Kali, like Eleven, was one of Dr. Brenner’s test subjects. Her psychic powers manifest differently from Eleven’s, as she can create hyperreal illusions. She managed to escape from Hawkins Lab by herself, meaning she wasn’t around for Eleven’s showdown with Henry Creel/Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) seen in the Season 4 flashbacks.
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When Eleven meets Kali in “The Lost Sister,” the pair thinks of themselves as family. With Kali, Eleven hopes to build a new home. After all, Kali encourages Eleven to hone her powers, and she also gives her her “bitchin'” makeover. However, her vengeful quest is at odds with Eleven’s desire to help her friends, and by the episode’s end, Eleven chooses to return to her real “home” in Hawkins. The last viewers see of Kali is her and her crew driving away from the police during a massive shootout.
How does Eight/Kali wind up in Stranger Things Season 5?
Linnea Berthelsen in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
Kali shows up at the very end of Stranger Things Season 5, Volume 1. For much of the seasons’s first four episodes, Eleven and Hopper navigate the Upside Down in the hopes of finding and killing Vecna. They believe he’s in Dr. Kay’s Upside Down lab, as they learn that the military is keeping someone with psychic powers down there.
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Turns out that person isn’t Vecna, though. It’s Kali, once again trapped in the experiments she fought so hard to escape as a child.
That’s all we get of Kali in Volume 1, but of course, her arrival raises boatloads of questions. What is the military doing to her, and what is the contraption they’ve stuck her in? How did Kali wind up here in the first place? Did the police catch her after the chase scene at the end of “The Lost Sister”?
Can Stranger Things Season 5 redeem the show’s most-hated episode?
Linnea Berthelsen and Millie Bobby Brown in “Stranger Things.”
Credit: Netflix
Stranger Things’ writers have been hinting at Kali’s return since 2023. On July 7, 2023, the writers’ room Twitter account posted, “I do think season 2 is consistently underrated. Highly recommend a rewatch before season 5…”
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Meanwhile, in a 2025 interview with Variety, series co-creator Ross Duffer said that when viewers watch all five seasons straight through, “It doesn’t feel like we dropped a storyline — it all connects.”
The mention of “dropped” storylines strongly implied the return of Kali, as she and her gang haven’t returned since Season 2. However, there’s a simple reason why Stranger Things abandoned that storyline in the first place. People just didn’t like it.
“The Lost Sister” has the lowest IMDb rating of every Stranger Things episode, currently sitting at 6.1 out of 10, with 35,000 reviews. (For reference, the second-lowest rated episode, Season 3 premiere “Suzie, Do You Copy?,” has a 7.8, with 27,000 reviews.) That dislike makes sense: The episode represents a huge deviation from the Stranger Things formula. “The Lost Sister” removes viewers from Hawkins for the first time, introduces an entirely new cast of characters, and takes on a much grittier tone. For viewers binge-watching Season 2, it’s a shock to the system and a break in the season’s momentum, even if it does give them more time with Eleven.
That’s not to say “The Lost Sister” is a complete failure. It’s a big stylistic swing and although it didn’t quite pay off, it’s still at least interesting to watch a show try something bold and new. Plus, it was the first example of Stranger Things scaling up beyond Hawkins, laying the groundwork for the Soviet Union and California plotlines of Season 4. As maligned as it is, the episode is still a key part of Stranger Things‘ growing pains, even as the show has psychically shoved it under the rug since Season 2.
However, the return of Kali in Season 5 could give Stranger Things the chance to redeem its most infamous episode, offering up further sisterhood and closure between Kali and Eleven. That Hopper — one of the people Eleven left Chicago to save — is with the two of them creates an extra layer of tension. Will Kali see him as just another person trying to use Eleven for her powers? Or will she recognize the caring family dynamic between the two?
There is another worrying option here, though. Stranger Things loves nothing more than to craft interesting side characters, then use them as cannon fodder to up the stakes and body counts of each season without sacrificing members of the main party. We’ve seen it with Eddie, Bob (Sean Astin), and Barb (Shannon Purser), to name a few. Could Kali be the next in a long line of dead Stranger Things side characters?
Ideally not, since the idea of death equalling solid closure for a storyline is a lazy one. Instead, let’s hope that Stranger Things can pull off an impressive magic trick in its last four episodes and turn a much-hated entry in its canon into one that viewers could revisit and appreciate in the coming years.
