The season’s audience score currently sits at 56%, making it the lowest-rated Stranger Things season among both fans and casual viewers to date. The drop comes amid growing criticism, with the season drawing fire from critics and audiences alike for its heavy reliance on exposition, repetitive dialogue, and uneven pacing.
The backlash began shortly after the premiere of the season’s first four episodes on November 26. Following that initial release, the audience score hovered in the 70–80% range before taking a sharper dive after the Christmas Day episode drop.
“The writing has fallen off a cliff, the story is disjointed, and the magic has gone,” one Rotten Tomatoes user wrote in a one-and-a-half-star review. “It’s a zombie series now — as in, it died a while ago, but its corpse keeps getting reanimated for another season. Wrap it up, guys.”
Much of the debate surrounding the season’s overall quality has centered on its penultimate episode, titled “The Bridge.” Written by series creators Matt and Ross Duffer and directed by the brothers alongside Shawn Levy, the episode currently holds a 5.4 rating on IMDb. That score makes it the lowest-rated episode in Stranger Things history, ranking even below the notoriously divisive Season 2 installment, “The Lost Sister.”
For most of its runtime, “The Bridge” focuses on setting the stage for the heroes’ final showdown with Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower). In its closing act, however, the episode pauses for an extended scene in which Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) comes out as gay to his closest friends and family. The moment is framed as an attempt by Will to confront his deepest fears and prevent Vecna from exploiting his fear of rejection or isolation once again.
While Will’s sexuality has been evident to viewers since Season 1, if not explicitly acknowledged by the show’s characters, the scene has nonetheless become a lightning rod for criticism. Some detractors cited it as evidence that the series has gone “woke,” with one user writing, “Woke ruins EVERYTHING … Netflix decided to RUIN their hottest show of all time.” Elon Musk also weighed in on X, calling the moment “completely pointless and forced on audiences who just want to enjoy some basic sci-fi.”
Others argued that the issue wasn’t the subject matter itself, but the timing and placement of the scene — occurring just as the characters are preparing to enter the Upside Down for one final battle.
“For five seasons, Stranger Things has struggled with how to handle Will, who started out as the show’s almost personality-less kidnapping victim in Season 1 and never fully developed beyond that,” USA Today critic Kelly Lawler wrote. “While his coming-out moment could have been triumphant and inspirational, it ends up feeling underwhelming and awkward.”
Still, plenty of viewers have come to the scene’s defense. “Will being gay has been part of the show since Season 1,” one X user wrote. “His coming out was something you should have expected if you were actually paying attention. It wasn’t woke, it wasn’t an agenda — it was just part of the story. Gay kids existed in the ’80s. And for the final battle, Will needed to face his biggest fear to stand a chance against Vecna.”
Fans will soon see how Will and his friends’ journey ultimately concludes when the Stranger Things series finale premieres Wednesday on Netflix.
