🔗 Share this article

It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended flawlessly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. During the hiatus, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints shedding light on future developments.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. In episode two, a key performer makes a choice that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. Halfway through the season, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Pitfall of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Take Kaos, a clever mythological satire with 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.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and every episode hit the right marks. In 1996, a plane carrying an all-girl high school football team crashes in the middle of nowhere. Top-notch cast members (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) depicted the survivors in dual eras. Numerous awards recognition occurred, creators confidently planned five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. This news brought me relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

Story decisions have weakened the core. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, 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 (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It's aggravating, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.

An Increasing Pattern

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and fallen headfirst into expected or comfortable cliches. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

The thing is, there are joys to be had in a limited, “one-and-done” series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Supreme Instance

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, occupying our minds endlessly, unresolved threads included. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. My So-Called Life, the ideal adolescent show, lasted for only one season but achieved film-like breadth: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. The conclusion provided no neat resolution, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Though stored on outdated technology, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Unique Connection

If writers recall the sacred audience-series connection, more shows can end gracefully.

• Priya Elan writes about the arts, music and fashion.