5 Worst Episodes Of Stranger Things, Ranked

"Stranger Things" remains the quintessential streaming series. It helped Netflix win the streaming wars, permeated pop culture, and became emblematic of the binge-watch era. Though the show has now come to an end, "Stranger Things" is still the series you think of when you think of Netflix, and regardless of how you feel about it, there's absolutely no doubting its cultural significance.

But even die-hard fans of the series will admit the show wasn't an unrelenting triumph from start to finish. Take the way "Stranger Things" Season 5 both excited and frustrated fans with a thrilling conclusion that also gave many beloved characters controversial endings. In fact, "Stranger Things" Season 5 got off to a bad start by letting the previous season's cliffhanger fall flat, and was met with significant criticism thereafter. Today it stands as the lowest-rated season on IMDb and the lowest-ranked season on Rotten Tomatoes.

But it's not as if "Stranger Things" had a perfect track record prior to its fifth season. The show has some infamous dud episodes — though some of the most well-known examples do get a lot more hate than perhaps they deserve. The point is that even with its standing as a cultural behemoth, "Stranger Things" has faltered on many occasions. Below are the five worst episodes, ranked.

You might find it unfair to start here, as the "Stranger Things" series finale was arguably almost perfect — until it wasn't. The show had already weathered significant criticism by the time it got to its last ever episode. When it did, however, that criticism ramped up as furious fans registered their dismay, disgust, and outrage following the mistake-ridden "Stranger Things" finale.

The biggest of these mistakes was tacking on a 40-minute long prologue that tried to wrap up every character's storyline as neatly as possible, but failed to do either. For one thing, entire characters suddenly went missing with their fates unexplained, while others were given resolutions that felt rushed. That's to say nothing of the infamously ambiguous conclusion to Eleven's (Millie Bobby Brown) story. So, is she alive or...?

On top of that, fans were served some of the most obvious character deaths possible alongside a litany of logical inconsistencies that, even for a sci-fi show about alternate dimensions and giant spider beasts, felt glaring. That's not to say the finale was a complete disaster. Wrapping up a show this popular — especially one with such complex lore and multiple characters and narratives — was never going to be easy and the Duffer Brothers did an admirable job in many ways. But there's simply no way the controversial "Stranger Things" finale doesn't make this list. If anything, it's a testament to the show's quality that an episode with so many memorable moments is in these rankings. Still, we're simply not accepting the showrunners' explanation for why the demogorgons suddenly vanished.

Not every "Stranger Things" episode was going to be a banger, but some of these filler episodes really are a slog. By the Season 4 midpoint, the show had become almost unrecognizable from the small town sci-fi thriller it started as, and was juggling multiple character groups and storylines. In this particular installment, that seemed to slow the pace to an absolute crawl.

Much of the episode is spent with Jim Hopper (David Harbour), who at this stage had been captured and was being held in a Soviet prison. Granted, the eventual break-out sequence at the end of the season made for one of the best moments in the entire series. But in "The Nina Project" we're a long way from that triumph, with Hopper being thrown back into the Kamchatka prison camp after a thrilling escape in the previous episode. Perhaps simply because it followed such a memorable episode, this one seemed a tad dull in comparison. Either way, it dragged on, and not just because of the return to Hopper's prison.

We also see Eleven placed in a sensory-deprivation tank called "NINA" which forces her to confront her memories of the past. It does provide a little more insight into the character's past, but ultimately the entire storyline seems overdone in what is one of the dullest filler episodes in the show's history. "Stranger Things" was originally conceived as a miniseries and episodes like this sort of give you the sense it might have worked out better that way.

"Stranger Things" Season 5 took a lot of flak from fans, and in many cases it's not hard to see why. Not only did the final season require knowledge of the "Stranger Things" stage play in order to be fully understood, it gave a major role to a background character you forgot existed. It had become such an unwieldy series in general it often seemed to buckle under the weight of its expansive cast and equally sprawling story.

No more was that obvious than in "Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz," which features a sequence that must have been bewildering to large swathes of the fanbase unfamiliar with the play. You can imagine the collective confusion as viewers watched a child version of Henry Creel (played as a child by Raphael Luce) kill a man in an underground cavern and open a briefcase only for none of it to be explained.

This episode also saw Nancy Wheeler (Natalia Dyer) and Jonathan Byers (Charlie Heaton) break up. But it wasn't actually all that obvious at the time. The now infamous scene in which they actually decide to break things off was written in such a needlessly cryptic way that it became almost impossible to tell what actually happened. What's more, the pair's seemingly impossible situation, in which the room around them starts melting, is very quickly resolved. The finale might have elicited the biggest backlash, but the writing was on the wall with this one.

This might be a controversial pick considering the episode is generally well-liked, but there's a reason the Season 3 premiere, "Suzie, Do You Copy?" Is on this list. In /Film's ranking of "Stranger Things" seasons, the third season came second to last. This run of episodes marked a notable shift in tone for "Stranger Things" from a darker, more mature horror series to a lighter, rose-tinted nostalgia-fest. It felt as though the Netflix suits had leaned on the Duffer Brothers to make their show more appealing to younger audiences. While much of Season 3 worked well enough, one thing that immediately stood out was the way Jim Hopper seemed like a completely different character.

In "Suzie, Do You Copy," Hopper is suddenly a bit of a buffoon. I'm all for the character evolving and can see how Hopper struggling to settle into his role as a father to Eleven would elicit some light comedy. But this was the start of David Harbour's character becoming almost completely unrecognizable. He went from a grounded heart-to-heart with Winona Ryder's Joyce Byers in the Season 2 finale to bumbling comic relief here, and it only got worse as the season went on.

What's more, for a season premiere, "Suzy, Do You Copy" doesn't do a whole lot to establish the story. There's an odd subplot about Dustin Henderson's (Gaten Matarazzo) girlfriend that never seems to go anywhere and another focusing on Billy Hargrove (Dacre Montgomery) picking up older women at the pool. These elements aren't egregious in their own right, but rather than adding flourishes to the core show, they're overplayed and end up distracting from the classic "Stranger Things" formula.

This episode gets a lot of hate but also has its fair share of defenders. Either way, there's no doubt that Season 2's "Chapter Seven: The Lost Sister" has become notorious since it debuted in 2017. Indeed, /Film's own Ben Pearson dubbed it the worst episode of "Stranger Things" at the time and little has changed. Today, it might just be the most controversial installment in "Stranger Things" history — which is saying something considering how upset fans got over the fate of Eleven in the series finale.

The episode sees Eleven travel to Chicago to find her "sister," a former fellow experimentee at the Hawkins Lab by the name of Kali (Linnea Berthelsen). The entire thing plays out without ever once cutting back to Hawkins, making this a departure episode seemingly designed to refresh the season. Unfortunately, fans weren't exactly thrilled to be taken on this particular excursion, and it's not hard to see why.

"The Lost Sister" is hated for multiple reasons. For one, you could remove it from the series altogether and it wouldn't really change much in terms of the narrative (until Kali is brought back in the fifth season, presumably to justify the existence of "The Lost Sister"). Some fans might argue that the episode was important as it allowed for significant character development, wherein Eleven realizes who her true family is. But did we need an entire episode devoted to that just as the series was coming to a climax? Did we need to be kept in suspense by a dull distraction as we waited to find out how the main storyline of Season 2 played out. We did not.