‘Stranger Things 5’ Gets Review Bombed
Some take issue with a character reveal, others with plot
Spoiler alert! “Stranger Things” has been review bombed after the Dec. 25 release of Season 5, Vol. 2. The show began in 2016, set in 1980s Indiana, featuring high suspense, dark fantasy, and evil monsters set against a group of misfit friends coming of age. It gained a cultish following for its winsome and sometimes dysfunctional human characters, gruesome creatures, and nostalgic ’80s cultural references – music, products, clothing and hair styles, and more. Season 5 came to Netflix in December 2025, with mixed reviews, from social conservatives and more mainstream viewers. Ethan Shanfeld of Variety offers a look at the response to the show’s final season.
The recent episodes have dragged the season’s fan-driven Rotten Tomatoes score from the 70s down to 56%, a stark decline from the show’s previous seasons. (For reference, the Season 4 Popcornmeter sits at 89%, Season 3 at 86%, Season 2 at 90% and Season 1 at 96%.)
A backlash campaign seemed to ignite after the Netflix series’ penultimate episode, “The Bridge,” which features a scene in which Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) comes out as gay to his friends. The lengthy monologue came as the Hawkins gang geared up to face Vecna, the big bad from the Upside Down. “The Bridge” is now the lowest-rated episode of “Stranger Things” on IMDb, with a score of 5.4 out of 10. (It’s the only episode below a 7.8, with most ranging between 8.6 and 9.2.) More than 96,000 users reviewed “The Bridge” on IMDb, while most other episodes this season have been rated by fewer than 50,000 people.
Elon Musk, who often gripes about movies and TV shows going “woke,” said “the culture is changing” in response to a post on X claiming that fans were “criticizing a character for coming out as homosexual.”
“It’s completely unnecessary and forced on audiences who just want to enjoy some basic sci-fi,” Musk wrote.
Review bombing from so-called “toxic fandom” is nothing new. Actors in big franchises – from “Star Wars” to “Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power” to “Bridgerton” – have long had to battle torrents of racism, sexism and homophobia on social media. Hollywood studios have even launched specialized focus group testing and begun training their actors in a social media boot camp to get ahead of it.
Still, many “Stranger Things” viewers clarified that they took no issue with Will’s sexuality, which has been alluded to since the first season. Rather, they criticized the show’s clunky exposition, slow-moving plot and half-baked writing.
Variety chief TV critic Alison Herman, for one, argued that the show declined to “enrich its characters as they age” and “remains primarily pastiche, so indebted to inherited archetypes (mad scientist, reformed bully) and references (The Clash, Peanut Butter Boppers) that its main cultural impact comes from extratextual elements like casting and the ascendance of Netflix.”
Daniel D’Addario, Variety’s chief correspondent, wrote that Will’s speech “strikes an emotional chord,” as it reflects actor Schnapp’s own coming out process. From his column: “This, a pivotal character opening up about being queer on a show as massive as ‘Stranger Things,’ feels seismic – and, oddly, like the culmination of a very long journey.”
In an interview about the episode, Schnapp told Variety he was “in tears” when he first read the scene, which he filmed over the span of nearly 24 hours. “The cast was so gracious. I’ll never forget how supportive they were on that day and how respectful and giving they were to me,” he said.
The final episode of “Stranger Things” debuted on Netflix and in theaters on Dec. 31.
PHOTO CAPTION: NEW YORK, NEW YORK – DECEMBER 18: (L-R) Ross Duffer, Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Charlie Heaton, Jamie Campbell Bower, Joe Keery, Natalia Dyer, Maya Hawke, Matt Duffer, and Caleb McLaughlin attend Paley Live’s “Stranger Things” – The Final Season Celebration at The Paley Museum on December 18, 2025 in New York City. CREDIT:(Photo by Mike Coppola/Getty Images).
© 2025 Variety Media, LLC, a subsidiary of Penske Business Media; Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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