Will’s coming out episode review bombed, becoming Stranger Things’ lowest-rated episode

The penultimate episode of Stranger Things, featuring Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) coming out as gay to his friends, has become the lowest-rated episode in the series’ history.

As the show reaches its end, episode seven of the fifth season, entitled “The Bridge”, saw a number of key plots begin to tie up. Max (Sadie Sink) returned to the real world, and the clan realised that Vecna (Jamie Campbell Bower) is planning to merge alternate dimension The Abyss with the human world.

Arguably the biggest moment of the episode came when Will Byers nervously told his mother Joyce (Winona Ryder) and then his friends – including his best pal and crush Mike Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) – that he is gay, in order to fight Vecna from using his insecurities against him.

Listing all of the similarities he shares with his friends, including dungeons and dragons, bike races and a shared love of Steve Martin, Will then tearfully added: “…I just don’t like girls.”

“I had this crush on someone, even though I know they’re not like me,” he continued, looking straight at Mike, setting the hearts of ‘Byler’ shippers alight. 

The five-minute scene ended with Joyce and his friends promising that they will love and support him, regardless of his sexuality. It’s a fairly unlikely conclusion to Will’s big secret, given that the show is set in the ‘80s, but moving nonetheless. Plus, this is Stranger Things; it’s not exactly grounded in reality.

Despite the moving scene striking a chord with some LGBTQ+ fans, the episode has seemingly been review bombed on rating and review site IMDb.

In the six days since its release (25 December in the US, 26 December in the UK), episode seven has received more than 100,000 ratings and reviews on IMDb, and has accumulated an average score of 5.4 out of 10. The most common rating is one out of ten, followed by 10 out of 10.

With its 5.4 average, “The Bridge” is the worst-rated Stranger Things episode by far, with its nearest competitor being season two’s seventh episode “The Lost Sister”, which has a score of six out of 10.

On Rotten Tomatoes, poor reviews of episode seven have driven down season five’s fan-rated score as a whole, with the season now achieving a 54 per cent approval rating. Every other season is fan-rated at above 86 per cent.

While it’s easy to assume that the bulk of those negative reviews may come from anti-LGBTQ+ viewers, many have come from queer fans who felt Will’s coming out scene was poorly written and haphazardly constructed.

“The coming out scene was the worst thing i’ve ever witnessed in film history and that’s saying something, because i’ve adored god-awful movies and shows. As someone in the queer community, there was absolutely no need for Will to ever confess in front of that many people,” one viewer wrote on IMDb.

“The fact [Will] was basically forced to come out because of Vecna, he didn’t choose to. Horrible. Poor Will has been through the wringer this whole series,” a second wrote.

A third said that the coming out scene “felt forced and unnecessary,” writing: “Will deserved a thoughtful, meaningful storyline, not something that stripped away his depth and turned years of buildup into a shallow and frustrating reveal.”

Others have hit out at the season’s overall writing, dubbing it “cringeworthy” and “awkward”.

According to Stranger Things creators the Duffer Brothers though, the scene is one they’ve been working on for a long, long time.

“Will and his coming out scene was something that we’d been building to for a very long time,” Ross Duffer told Netflix’s Tudum recently. “It’s important that he comes to terms with this. Once he’s able to do that, he’s heading into this final battle with a confidence and maturity that he hasn’t had before.”

Noah Schnapp, who came out as gay himself in early 2023, recently revealed that the scene wasn’t exactly rushed during the filming process either. He explained that it took 12 hours to film, and 12 hours to reshoot. 

“I read it every morning, every night for the month leading up to it,” Schnapp told Tudum of rehearsing the big moment.

“And that allowed me on the day to just completely forget the script, completely forget about remembering my lines, and that just kind of poured out of me. And what I could focus on is just tapping into that feeling and that emotion.”

Stranger Things season five, episode eight – the finale – streams on Netflix from 31 December in the US and 1 January in the UK.

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