Diksha Sundriyal
The fifth season of Netflix’s ‘Stranger Things’ leads the characters back into the Upside Down, where they try to figure out a number of things at the same time. While Vecna’s true intentions with Hawkins, especially the kidnapping of Holly and other kids, remain a major focus, the military and government’s secret experiments in the Hawkins lab return to focus. In an attempt to find Holly, Eleven enters the Upside Down, where Hopper is already on a crawl to find Vecna’s location. Their efforts are hindered by the military men who have made a base in the Upside Down, and the duo decides to target the base when Eleven discovers that there is a vault inside the secret facility, which may also be the origin point of the “kryptonite” they have found to weaken her. She makes a bold assumption about what’s behind the door, but what she actually finds shocks her beyond belief. SPOILERS AHEAD.
Hopper and Eleven Make an Unexpected Discovery Inside the Vault
There aren’t a lot of things that can incapacitate Eleven, which is why she and Hopper become concerned when they discover that the military seems to have found something that leaves her in terrible pain, unable to use her powers. To figure out what this secret weapon, aka her kryptonite, is, she goes inside the head of a soldier she and Hopper capture. Inside his mind, she can see a secret vault, but because the soldier has never been inside the vault, his mind cannot betray its contents to Eleven. Still, she figures that only Henry aka Vecna’s powers can be strong enough to debilitate her.
She becomes convinced that the military has somehow captured Henry and is harnessing his power to track her down. Somehow, Hopper and Eleven make it to the vault, and Hopper enters it wearing a bomb belt. He knows he cannot defeat Vecna, so he is ready to kill the monster by blowing himself up in his vicinity. Fortunately, it doesn’t come to that, as it turns out that the captive is not Henry but Kali, aka 008. This is a major surprise for Eleven, as the last time she saw Kali was in Season 2, when they parted ways because they wanted different things. The girls had bonded over their shared trauma and their desire to bring to justice the people who did them wrong.
They called each other sisters, and even as they parted ways, they knew that would remain each other’s family because only they knew what the other had been through. Because Kali had been so far away from Hawkins and the Upside Down, Eleven didn’t anticipate seeing her caught up in the mess. The last time she saw her sister, she was moving in the opposite direction with her ragtag crew of misfits. But now, it seems that not only has she been captured and experimented upon, but her powers have also been exploited to weaken Eleven and capture her.
Kali’s Return Could Shed More Light on Dr. Kay’s Plan
The fifth season introduces the character of Dr. Kay, who is the leader of the mission, which she has solely focused on capturing Eleven. Even though Vecna is a more dangerous enemy, she and the soldiers don’t seem to be as concerned about fighting him as they are about getting their hands on Eleven. Still, there are a lot of other things going on inside the lab, so at this point, it is difficult to say exactly what Dr. Kay wants from Eleven. However, the fact that Kali was captured suggests that her intentions are grander than what initially appeared. In the previous seasons, under the leadership of Dr. Brenner, Eleven seemed to be the focus of all experiments, and Kali was rarely, if ever, mentioned by them.
It seemed that she was all but forgotten, which kind of made her immune to the dangers that Eleven was exposed to. However, her capture suggests that Dr. Kay did not limit her focus to Hawkins. It remains to be seen how and when Kali was captured and how long she was experimented upon. What’s clear is that she was being used to amplify the power of the kryptonite that could easily incapacitate Eleven, and maybe even Vecna. We know that Kali has the power to create illusions, which is a manifestation of Vecna’s powers, where he traps people in their minds and memories, exploiting their emotions to gain control over them.
Perhaps what we saw in Season 2 was just the beginning of Kali’s powers. Possibly, since her separation from Eleven, she tapped into her unknown potential and found a way to push her powers beyond creating simple illusions. It is also possible that the kryptonite itself is an illusion, causing Eleven to believe she is in pain and cannot use her powers. All of that will be revealed as Kali tells the story of her captivity. More importantly, the extent of her powers will also shed light on how much help she can be in the impending fight against Vecna. Considering everything, Eleven and her friends will need all the help they can get.
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