The Duffer Brothers are ready with their defense for "Stranger Things" Season 2, Episode 7, "The Lost Sister."

***Spoilers ahead***

Of the nine episodes, it's the biggest departure in that it's a bottle/standalone episode for Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown), set away from Hawkins on Eleven's quest to find her lab "sister" Kali, aka Eight (Linnea Berthelsen). Kali has special powers, like Eleven, and she leads her own group taking revenge against the people who kept her in that Hawkins, Indiana, lab.

The whole season started with her gang in Pittsburgh, and returned to Kali during Eleven's journey in Episode 7.

Not all fans liked the Episode 7 split from Hawkins. Here are early some reactions from the Friday bingers:

In a talk with Entertainment Weekly, "Stranger Things" creators Ross and Matt Duffer defended the "Chapter Seven" "experiment" as necessary for their own creative stretching, and also Eleven's story arc:

"Our test of the episode was we tried to pull it out of the show just to make sure that we needed it because I didn't want it in there as filler — even though some critics are accusing us of doing that. But Eleven's journey kind of fell apart, like the ending didn't work, without it. So I was like, whether this works or not, we need this building block in here or the whole show is going to collapse. It's not going to end well. The Mind Flayer is going to take over Hawkins.

That Eleven story line overall is sort of the biggest risk we took. We're going to continue to do risks moving forward to keep us on our toes. I didn't want her to just magically save the day. Just like Luke Skywalker, she needed to go off on her own and learn something about herself."

"Stranger Things" Season 2 just dropped on Netflix today (Friday, October 27).

Want more stuff like this? Like us on Facebook.