Stranger Things, S5 E7 “The Bridge” coordinated review bombing.

Thank you for bringing this to attention. It’s insane that this has even happened I really hope they readjust the ratings despite the review bombings. 

Still hasn’t been fixed. Review bombing has been worse in the 8 last hours, and it affects all three episodes from volume 2.

It undermines the credibility of IMDB, when no actions are done, and you only let it happen.

This have to be fixed. It’s not fair that a show ends up as game of thrones, simply because of a smaering campaign and because IMDB let the review bombing happen with zero consequences or actions.

If IMDB doesn’t fix this, we can’t trust any of the ratings on IMDB, which is sad.

I completely agree. The abnormal voting patterns across all three Volume 2 episodes clearly show coordinated review bombing. I’ve seen multiple posts on X not only encouraging this behavior but also sharing direct links to The Bridge episode on IMDb and instructing people to create multiple accounts to rate all three episodes a 1.

IMDb really needs to investigate and adjust the scores so they accurately reflect the quality of these episodes, especially with Episode 8 still upcoming.

@sambennett​ 

This isn’t just Episode 7 anymore.

Episodes 5 and 6 are now showing the exact same rating behavior that Episode 7 had earlier. Large spikes in 1★ ratings happened very suddenly, right after people on social media started encouraging others to downrate multiple episodes.

What makes this obvious:

• The 1★ votes jump way faster than normal

• The voting distribution looks nearly identical across Episodes 5, 6, and 7

• Nothing new actually happened in Episodes 5 or 6 to cause a sudden collapse in ratings

• People are openly saying they’re lowering ratings on purpose, not based on quality

That’s not normal audience reception — that’s coordinated review bombing.

We’ve seen this exact thing happen before with other shows (The Last of Us S1E3, anime finales, etc.), and in those cases the ratings eventually corrected once the abnormal votes were down-weighted.

So when people say “Episode 7 deserves a low rating,” that still doesn’t explain why Episodes 5 and 6 are dropping the same way at the same time. That only makes sense if people are targeting the season as a whole.

You don’t have to love the episodes — but the numbers right now clearly don’t reflect genuine viewer opinion.

You’re right I noticed they have taken a decline now. Even Reddit and X are seeing how blasphemous these ratings are and can see who it’s coming from. Only episode 7 is noticeable but the other two have for sure been affected unjustly.

The episodes deserve at least an 8 as its quality is similar to that of its predecessor. This is intentionally manipulated by these shippers to mess not only with the season’s ratings from the general audience but to undermine the integrity and quality of the show to push forth an agenda that was and is false. It’s disturbing for this to have a huge toll on an otherwise reliable source, and hugely disrespectful to the producers and actors of the show to be indirectly affected by this and needs to be looked at and amended. 

@sambennett​ 

Agreed. The key point is the timing and distribution, not whether someone personally liked the episodes. Episodes 5 (“Escape from Camazotz”), 6 (“Shock Jock”), and 7 (“The Bridge”) all show the same sudden surge in extreme low ratings within a very short window, without any new in-episode trigger for 5 or 6. That pattern is not consistent with organic audience reception and matches what we’ve seen in past coordinated rating events on IMDb. Hopefully the abnormal votes get down-weighted once the system finishes processing.

For reference, Episode 7 (“The Bridge”) dropped from 8.2 to 5.6 within a few days, while Episodes 5 (“Escape from Camazotz”) and 6 (“Shock Jock”) originally held ratings around 9.2 and 8.8–9.0, respectively, before suddenly dropping at the same time. This sharp, simultaneous decline across multiple episodes, paired with social media campaigns encouraging mass downvotes, strongly suggests coordinated review manipulation rather than organic audience reaction.

You hit the nail on the head with everything.

It deserves, as every form of media does, to be weighed fairly and not affected by abrupt mass campaigns that don’t reflect the quality of the episode but are intended only to sabotage. I hope they amend the ratings notably, and put further regulations in place to prevent this from happening again.