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This scenario is painfully common. The second series of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and optimism runs high. The debut season ended flawlessly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. After the season wrapped, you scoured online forums with other hardcores to decode subtle references illuminating what would happen next.

But the new season opener falls flat. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. In episode two, a key performer makes a choice that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious the creators forgot regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you long for an earlier termination.

The Pitfall of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Consider Kaos, a clever mythological satire starring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Numerous awards recognition occurred, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to develop the plot thoroughly. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. This news brought me relief.

Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in the forthcoming fifth season of Stranger Things.

Plot twists have diluted the essence. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their struggle with traumatic memories, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of introducing peripheral figures (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It’s frustrating, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.

A Growing Trend

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and settled into familiar patterns. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, return repeatedly with declining quality. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Supreme Instance

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, residing permanently in our thoughts, cliffhangers and all. My top series ever followed this pattern. The classic teen series, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, lasted for only one season but was cinematic in its scope: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. The ending left questions unanswered, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Sacred Bond

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more series can conclude appropriately.

• Priya Elan focuses on cultural topics.