The Rotten Tomatoes audience score for the final season of Stranger Things has turned upside down.
The show’s score has plummeted in the wake of the release of the second batch of episodes from season five, falling to a series-low 57 percent.
The show has also received plenty of blowback on social media since the Vol. 2 episodes were released on Christmas Day.
The reasons are a bit complex. The show already received some pushback during the release of Vol. 1 last month with an audience score that was reportedly in the 70s — below prior seasons, which averaged 86 percent or higher. Some fans griped that the writing of the new season hasn’t been as strong, with characters voicing too much overlapping exposition and bickering amid thick layers of special effects.
“Some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen on a major TV show,” wrote one fan on X. “Every single scene in season 5 is exposition.”
Complaints about the show skyrocketed with last week’s release of Vol. 2, with one moment in particular becoming a flashpoint. In the show’s penultimate episode, “The Bridge,” Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) came out to his friends in a lengthy monologue. The moment came as the Hawkins kids prepared to face the villainous demon Vecna. “The Bridge” is now the show’s lowest-rated episode on IMDb.
The backlash is partly exactly what you expect: that Stranger Things went “woke.” Elon Musk, for example, waded in: “It’s completely unnecessary and forced on an audience that just wants to enjoy some basic science fiction.”
But much of the backlash isn’t centered on Will being gay, or even that he came out — and this is where things get more nuanced. Will’s sexuality has been apparent from the first season. Much of the backlash is about how the moment was handled — a show-stopping speech right as the show’s action was escalating into its climactic crisis that some felt was cringey and jarring.
“The forcing of everyone into a room to sit and be quiet then listen to every awkward word that came out of Will’s mouth when most already knew and didn’t give a f—k because they are trying to save the world,” one wrote on X.
One site pointed out, “This isn’t about Will being gay. Nobody is offended by that … You don’t need to pause the apocalypse to spell out character traits everyone already understands. You don’t need to sacrifice pacing, tension and logic to make a statement that adds nothing to the plot … These kids have … stared down literal hell and lived to tell the story. Somehow, through all of that chaos, Will’s sexuality was the one big secret nobody noticed?”
Some comparedStranger Things‘handling of Will’s coming out to HBO’s surprise hitHeated Rivalry, which chronicles a sports romance between two gay hockey players. “I super enjoyed Heated Rivalry, which is by far the sluttiest series of the year,” wrote one fan. “The difference is between a fantasy series that forces minutes into the plot that don’t add up and a series that doesn’t deny what it is.”
Even USA Today pointed out, “Something was off about the scene. For five seasons, Stranger 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. While his coming out moment could have been triumphant and inspirational, it ends up being underwhelming and awkward.”
Yet other fans defended the scene. “As a gay person who came out in front of 20 classmates in the 2000s, I felt deeply seen by Will’s confession — sharing his truth with the people he calls family,” wrote one fan on X. “If it was hard in 2003, I can’t imagine doing it in the ’80s, when being gay or lesbian meant surviving a witch hunt.”
Another argued that Will’s sexuality being previously established is precisely why it had to be paid off as he went to confront Vecna: “Will being gay has been a part of the show since Season 1 … But coming out in the ’80s was not an easy thing to do and Vecna latches on to YOUR WORST FEAR to control you … [So] 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.”
Creators the Duffer brothers haven’t responded to a request to comment on the controversy, but they previously discussed creating the coming-out scene with The Hollywood Reporter.
The Duffers said they spent the longest amount of time of the series writing that pivotal scene, which they also co-directed (they shared duties with executive producer Shawn Levy on the 66-minute episode).
“I just know it took forever,” Matt Duffer said. “Originally, it was just going to be him coming out to his mom, and then we felt it needed to be more than that and that it needed to involve his friends. We worked on that for a while with just Joyce [Winona Ryder], and it just never felt right. So, once we involved the friends, it started to click a little bit more into place. I don’t recall exactly how long it took. I just remember it taking quite a long time, and then being nervous when we showed it to Noah. Because so much of it is close to what he’s been through, but, also he knows Will so well. So it had to be truthful for him on two fronts. And so the fact that it resonated with him was great, and then we felt so much relief, and the pressure kind of went onto Noah.
“He does put a lot of pressure on himself,” he continued. “But he did have the script several months in advance, and he spent a lot of time by himself working and prepping the scene. Most of what you see in the show is the first close-up shot that we did. We actually did hardly any directing … Most of it is from take one. He just killed it. Killed it. And he felt such immense relief, I think, when he did.”
Added Ross Duffer: “It’s rare, but sometimes there are moments where you’re like, ‘We just won’t capture that again.’”
The duo also teased that Will will be pivotal to the series finale. “We’ve always known that Will was going to be key,” Ross Duffer said. “And obviously, we’ve kept this connection to the Upside Down going, even at the end of season two when they got the Mind Flayer out of him. But it was one of the first ideas, probably the first idea we had as we sat down to break season five — that the story began with Will’s kidnapping, and so it felt right to end with the need to center a lot of the season around Will one more time as we come to a conclusion.”
The series finale of Stranger Things will be released Dec. 31.