By now, you've had enough time to burn through the second season of Stranger Things.
If not, here's your spoiler warning.
If you have binged your way through Stranger Things 2, you might be holding onto some nagging
questions after that final episode.
Sure, it was a great ending.
But did it clear up everything?
Not even close.
Here are some of the biggest questions we wish Stranger Things 2 had answered.​
Lost sister
In Chapter 7: The Lost Sister, we finally meet the mysterious girl from the season's
start: Kali, Eleven's sister-but-not-really from the Hawkins Lab.
Like Eleven, Kali manifests paranormal abilities, and can make people see anything she wants.
Eleven burns through her rebellious streak and finally realizes that home is back in
Hawkins with her friends.
So… what happened to Kali and her weird little gang?
After opening the season on these guys and then devoting an entire episode to them, there's
no follow up whatsoever.
Evil Dr. Brenner
One of the big reveals in Chapter 7 was the fact that Dr. Brenner, the evil scientist
from Season 1, is alive after all.
Eleven and Kali track down Ray, the guy who zapped Eleven's mother.
And just as they're about to lay down the hurt…
"Brenner!
I can take you to him."
"Papa is gone."
"No.
He is alive."
But since Brenner never appears in the flesh, fans can only wonder: was Ray telling the
truth, or was he lying to them to buy himself some time?
Unfortunately, the show drops the question of Brenner's whereabouts after Eleven's hallucination,
so we never do find out for sure if the doc survived the demogorgon in Season 1.
And while we're on the topic of nefarious scientists...
Nice Dr. Owens
Somewhere in the 'chaotic good' area of the moral scale, some scenes see Dr. Owens doing
his best to help Will, Hopper, and the gang—even going so far as to speak out against eradicating
the tunnel growths while they can still affect Will.
But we also see him clandestinely monitoring all these people he's supposedly helping.
One thing to keep in mind is that even casting decisions hold some weight for these characters,
and Owens is played by Paul Reiser, who played a similarly not-so-good good guy in Aliens.
Considering that the Duffer brothers love Aliens and wrote Dr. Owens with Reiser in
mind to play the part, there's probably a lot more to the guy than we've seen.
And then there's Owens surviving the demodog infestation at Hawkins Lab.
Even the military guys with guns didn't stand a chance.
Even Bob didn't stand a chance, and he was the best.
"Mr. Mom!
Whoo!"
And Owens managed to escape with a leg wound?
Color us suspicious.
And no, we're not even letting the fact that Owens very nicely doctored up a birth certificate
for Eleven change our mind.
There's just something about that guy…
"He figured he could get an alien through quarantine if one of us were impregnated.
Or whatever you call it"
Oh yeah, that's it.
The Shadow Monster
Sure, they gave it plenty of names, like the Shadow Monster and the Mind Flayer, but what
is that big leggy thing, specifically?
We know it's connected to the rest of the organisms that come out of the Upside-Down,
but the closest thing we get to a backstory for the Shadow Monster is Dustin's Dungeons
& Dragons analogy.
"It's so ancient that it doesn't even know it's true home.
It enslaves other races by taking over its brains by using its highly developed psionic
powers."
But since that's only an analogy, it still doesn't explain anything about the actual
Shadow Monster threatening Hawkins.
And, big surprise, neither does the show.
All we know is that it's probably pretty mad, since it basically just got shoved out of
an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Looks like we'll have to wait until Season 3 for this one.
Infection
While Chief Hopper's exploring the underground tunnels in Chapter 5, he discovers some weird
new organisms from the Upside-Down, including a flower that sneezes right in his face.
Two of them, in fact.
Later, the same thing happens to Dustin.
But what did those flowers spray on them, and are they now infected with something?
Because there is some precedent for people in Hawkins acting as incubators for other
critters.
While it's not exactly the same, Hopper's episode is reminiscent of what happened to
Will Byers in Season 1.
When Hopper and Joyce found Will in the Upside-Down in the season finale, Will had a vine-like
thing rammed down his throat.
A couple months later, Will choked out a slug that slithered down the drain.
Similarly, Eleven sees the same kind of slug crawl out of Barb's mouth when she finds her
body in the Upside-Down.
Flash forward again to Season 2, and Dustin finds a slug in his trash can that looks a
lot like those other slugs, just with feet.
When Will sees it, he even has a flashback to that slimy Christmas surprise.
Is Dustin's pet Dart the same slug, or at least the same species?
That seems to be the takeaway, which means that Will had a baby demodog living in him
for awhile.
So is there something living inside Hopper now?
And if so, what is it?
Is Dart a demogorgon?
During this season, we see a creature grow from a slug with legs to a demodog in a ridiculously
short amount of time.
The demodog phase seems to be the cap at this point, but those faces sure look familiar,
don't they?
It begs the question: after spending some time on four legs, do the demodogs molt again
and eventually turn into full-sized demogorgons?
There's no real reason to assume they do—it's totally understandable for different creatures
with the same messed up face to live in the Upside-Down—but admit it: as soon as you
saw Dart eating Dustin's cat, there was only one word on your mind.
"Demogorgon."
The show never confirms whether or not Dart actually is the same species as the monster
from Season 1, and even though the easy answer is yes, there's nothing to confirm that either
way.
Mystery eggs
Come on!
We waited a whole year to find out what those eggs from Season 1 were, and got zero answers
in the new season.
In light of all the new information about the Upside-Down, including what may be an
entire multi-species ecosystem, we were really hoping for those eggs to get an explanation.
Do the demogorgons eat them?
Do they lay them, like big scary chickens?
What hatched out of the one Hopper found?
We just have a million questions about those eggs, and we cordially request some answers.
Missing Yurtle
By the end of the season, most of the characters are checked off and accounted for.
But there's one more character still missing that nobody seems to be asking about.
When Dustin finds teensy little Dart in his trash can, he takes his turtle out of its
cage to give Dart a home.
"Sorry Yurtle, temporary eviction buddy."
Eventually, little Dart turns out to be a killer pre-demadog, and after that, it's a
whirlwind of hockey pads and nail-studded baseball bats as Dustin and Steve try to track
down the rogue demodog.
But...what about the turtle?
Did Dart eat the turtle?
Or is it just gathering dust bunnies under Dustin's bed?
This is clearly the question on everyone's mind—and if it isn't, why not?
You monster!
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