Stranger Things Creators Defend Will’s Coming Out Scene, ‘I Believe’ Series Ending

Despite it being set up for years, and fans speculating and anticipating the moment, the biggest controversy (apparently) for this final season came in the penultimate episode, “The Bridge.” That’s certainly the case on Rotten Tomatoes, which saw the entire fifth season’s ratings drop to 56%, well below the previous low of 86% for Season 3.

With 96,000 reviews, “The Bridge” is the lowest-rated episode of the entire series, and almost all of the negativity is over Will (Noah Schnapp) coming out as gay to his friends. He’s not the first gay character on the show and it’s not like fans haven’t been speculating for nearly a decade that he was gay — but review bombing over hot-button political-social issues is certainly nothing new.

Talking about the scene with Variety, creators Matt and Ross Duffer reiterated that this is not some last-minute “woke” agenda, as some reviews have tried to argue. “The coming out scene is something we’ve been building to for nine years now,” said Ross. “It was a really important scene for us, and a really important scene for Noah — not just from a thematic point of view, but also a narrative point of view.”

Like with much of the series, what the kids of Hawkins has been facing has in large part been allegorical of the anxieties of finding themselves and growing up into adulthood. The same goes for Will’s entire series-long arc that’s seen him the pawn of villain Vecna and finally someone able to fight back.

“This show has always been about our characters overcoming evil, and in order to overcome this evil, Vecna, in so many ways, represents all the dark thoughts and the evil of society,” Ross continued. “And for our characters to overcome that, it really becomes about embracing themselves, and then also embracing one another and coming together.”

For the Duffer Brothers, Will’s coming out was “the final step in Will’s journey.” Matt explains that Will has been moving toward this all season long, coming to acceptance within himself, then talking to Robin (Maya Hawke), who is also gay, about his anxieties being accepted.

“He’s trying to figure out how to come out, and he knows that he needs to do that, and that that’s the final step for him,” Matt explains. “And he finds the courage to be able to do it. And it’s really the ultimate f–k you to Vecna. That was the intention.”

They talked about how their main intention with the episode’s release was to keep checking in with Schnapp to see how he was, with both brothers saying the young actor is “in a really good place. He’s very proud of the scene, and we’re proud of the scene.” They noted that it hits “close to home” for Schnapp, who’s previously come out publicly as gay himself.

Nevertheless, despite the divisive state of the nation on topics like this, Matt said they were still surprised by the level of hate the episode received, explaining they didn’t expect it because they didn’t think it was necessarily something that was coming as a surprise. It’s “something we’ve been building for a really long time,” he explained. “I always say, Ross and I are many things, but subtle is not one of those things!”

Just as Will’s story of self-acceptance was a part of his journey toward adulthood, so was the ultimate fate of Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown). While there was a possibility established that Mike (Finn Wolfhard) shared with his friends where El survived the final encounter with the U.S. military thanks to the illusion powers of her friend, and fellow test subject Kali (Linnea Berthelson), the decision to have her story end the way it did fed the growing up narrative, as well.

“It was very early on in the writing process of this season that we figured out exactly how to tell that story and landed on the ‘I believe’ moment,” Ross told Variety. Despite El seemingly sacrificing herself to save any future children from becoming experimental subjects, Mike shared his version of events where Kali helped El to fake her dramatic final moments and she was able to live on, finding a normal life of her own. One by one, the friends declared, “I believe” this story, giving their friend a happy ending.

“Once we landed on ‘I believe,’ then that sort of cracked it wide open,” Ross said, adding that for them, “Eleven represents, in a lot of ways, the magic of childhood. And we knew for our kids to be able to grow up, the magic had leave Hawkins.”

“There was never a version that we had written where it was Eleven down in that basement,” he said, referring to the final Dungeons & Dragons game played by the surviving friends after their high school graduation. “It was never going to be that simple and that easy. It was finding a way to come up with an ending where it was not that simple, but also bittersweet, and that there was hope there.”

During the interview, Matt shared with Variety that Brown was attempting to contact him mid-interview, with her hilariously sharing her own emotional thoughts on that finale: “I’m alive, guys!”

Matt went on to explain the writing process for El’s fate, where she heard one possibility from her father figure Hopper (David Harbour), one where she got to live on after the traumatic life she’d endured, and the other from Kali, who told her that the only way for all of this to truly end was for them to end with it.

“If you, like Mike and the others, choose to believe that she is alive somewhere, then she picked something in the middle,” Matt said. “But either way, it’s a completely selfless act and heroic act on Eleven’s part.”

They also acknowledge that there was enough there to make Mike’s story possible with Kali’s return this season and his revelation about the speakers, which should have impacted El’s ability to function, much less use her powers, in that final moment.

“How could she have possibly made it all the way to the gate? Not only that. How could she have possibly used her powers to bring him into the void?” Matt asked rhetorically. “But there are a lot of other questions. Could Kali have actually done that? Could she have possibly been alive? We like that it’s up to the audience. Obviously, we tell you what the characters choose.”

Eleven’s final fate, though, will remaining intentionally ambiguous, according to the Duffers, with Matt saying that he likes that the audience is largely choosing to align with the gaming group in that final scene and “believe.”

Stranger Things is streaming in its entirety on Netflix.