The audience score for “Stranger Things” Season 5 took a sharp downturn this week following the Dec. 25 release of the season’s Volume 2 episodes.
The season’s audience score currently sits at 56%, making it the lowest-rated “Stranger Things” season among fans and casual viewers to date. This development, notably, comes amid growing criticisms of the season, which has been knocked by both critics and general viewers alike for its reliance on exposition, repetitive dialogue and more.
Those critiques first appeared online after the premiere of the season’s opening four episodes on Nov. 26. In the aftermath of that episode drop, the season’s audience score settled into the 70-80% range before the Christmas Day drop.
“The writing has fallen off a cliff, the story is disjointed, and the magic has gone,” wrote one Rotten Tomatoes user in their one-and-a-half star review of the season. “It’s a zombie series now, as in, it died some time again but it’s corpse keeps being reanimated for another series. Wrap it up guys.”
At the center of the ongoing discussion surrounding the season’s overall quality is “Stranger Things” Season 5’s penultimate episode, titled “The Bridge.” The episode, which was written by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer and directed by them and Shawn Levy, currently holds a 5.4 rating on IMDb. That makes it the lowest-rated “Stranger Things” episode ever, as it sits even below the show’s notoriously divisive Season 2 installment, “The Lost Sister.”
For the most part, the episode’s runtime is dedicated to setting up its heroes’ final battle against the villainous Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). It does, however, set time aside in its closing act for a lengthy scene in which Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) comes out as gay to all of his closest friends and family members, in an attempt to both get everything out in the open and prevent Vecna from using his fear of rejection or isolation against him again.
Will’s sexuality has been clear to viewers, if not some of the show’s characters, ever since “Stranger Things” Season 1. Nonetheless, some have used the scene as evidence of “Stranger Things” going “woke” (“Woke ruins EVERYTHING … Netflix decided to RUIN their most popular show of all-time,” wrote one user). Elon Musk even criticized the moment Sunday on X, writing, “It’s completely unnecessary and forced on audiences who just want to enjoy some basic sci-fi.”
Others have argued that the issue with the scene is not its subject matter but the time and place at which it occurs in the show — i.e., right when Will’s loved ones are all on the verge of venturing into the Upside Down one last time.
“For five seasons, ‘Stranger Things’ has struggled with how to deal with Will, who started out as the show’s almost personality-less kidnap victim back in Season 1 and never developed much from there,” wrote USA Today‘s Kelly Lawler of the episode’s centerpiece scene. “While his coming out moment could have been triumphant and inspirational, it ends up being underwhelming and awkward.”
Some viewers, conversely, have come out in defense of the scene. “Will being gay has been a part of the show since Season 1,” one X user noted. “Will coming out should have been something you all expected to see if you have actually been paying attention. It wasn’t woke, it wasn’t an agenda. It was just part of the story. Gay kids existed in the 80s, not a big deal and for the final battle Will needed to overcome his worst fear to stand a chance against Vecna.”
Fans will get to see the culmination of Will and his friends’ shared journey when the “Stranger Things” series finale premieres Wednesday on Netflix.
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