Stranger Things, Netflix’s nostalgic-horror coming-of-age genre hit, has always inhabited an unusual cultural space between mainstream and cult. Yet with the December 2025 Season 5, Volume 2 release, the series has become the target of a coordinated backlash that says as much about today’s fandom as it does about the show.In the wake of the release, review-bombing has plagued Stranger Things, with the audience-powered Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter graph showing the score coming down from 70% to 56%. The decline is notable when compared with the past season, which had quite good ratings. Season 4 is at 89%, Season 3 at 86%, Season 2 at 90%, and the premiere season at a phenomenal 96%, per reports.Read on to know what we know about the latest review bombings.Will's coming-out episode in Stranger Things gets the lowest IMDb scoresAs mentioned, the previous seasons gained phenomenal viewer ratings, and the dramatic decline for Stranger Things' final season is astonishing, especially after how fans loved Will Byers' capability of fighting with Vecna. This dramatic decline is less about organic dissatisfaction and more about a jointly arranged response.The breaking point seems to be the second last episode, “The Bridge.” As the Hawkins group prepares for its showdown with Vecna, the episode pauses for a quiet but emotionally explicit moment. Will Byers, played by Noah Schnapp, comes out as gay to his friends. The scene features a monologue that is measured and open to connect the viewers more with the character before the story’s climactic escalation.However, the reaction was immediate and very strong. “The Bridge” is now the worst-rated episode of the entire series on IMDb, with a score of 5.4 out of 10. Uniquely, it is the only episode to drop below a 7.8, and most of the series episodes drop between 8.6 and 9.2. The contrast becomes even more pronounced if you look at voting patterns on the site. Around 1,07,000 users gave “The Bridge” a rating, whereas the other episodes in Season 5 are mostly rated by around 50,000 users. The surge is a clear sign of once-organized participation rather than a common airhead response.What does this pattern say about the review of Stranger Things season 5 episode?Posts from the stranger_things community on RedditThis reflects a usual pattern in current media culture. These days, review-bombing is more rooted in ideological outrage than artistic assessment and has become a regular response to films, games, and TV with queer characters, racial politics, or storylines deemed “political”.But what is particularly telling about the backlash is that it contradicts. Years before, fans speculated openly about Will’s sexuality, reading subtext that the show suggested. When the series finally says outright what has been insinuated, the reaction is not relief, but punishment.The reception of the episode highlights a broader tension with prestige franchise television. As shows try to wrap up long-running stories, they are increasingly under pressure from viewers who want emotional payoff but no emotional discomfort, and the Netflix show's season 5 episode is an example of the same.