No, the infamous Stranger Things Season 2 episode wasn’t a backdoor spin-off pilot

Stranger Things is a lot of… well… things. But, it grew into something huge, spawning Netflix’s real hit, but alongside its audience-panned series finale, there lies another infamous episode; The Lost Sister. The episode was so bad that Matt and Ross Duffer, the brothers who created the series, admitted they’d like to redo that episode.

Over time, it was claimed the episode was this whole odd backdoor pilot for a spin-off. This, however, is not the case. Straight from the horse’s mouth on Happy, Sad, Confused, the duo called the rumor “bulls**t,” asserting they’d never do that.

“First of all, let me just clear up some bulls**t out on the internet. There’s so much bulls**t, we’d be here all day, but that was never designed as like a spin-off. That’s bulls**t. That’s not true. That’s gross. We would not do that.”

In case you’re not up-to-date with the whole Stranger Things hullabaloo, Season 2, Episode 7 saw Eleven end up in Chicago and meet some soon-to-be-friends, including Kali who shares a connection to Eleven’s past and also holds supernatural powers. The episode, by the brothers’ admission, should’ve been handled differently, but that’s in the past and when heading into Season 3, they also admitted that it was sad doing so, as reception to the episode didn’t warm up at all.

Obviously, that didn’t totally cripple the series, having continued on for five seasons until it ultimately concluded with a special theatrical released episode. Unfortunately, that didn’t actually go over too well reception-wise. But, they do have some real spin-offs in the pipeline.