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Many viewers know this disappointment. Season two of your beloved TV show drops on your platform, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended so perfectly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints pointing toward upcoming twists.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. Cut to the second episode, a key performer makes a choice that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Curse of Overextension

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Consider Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology featuring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. However, supporters might find comfort knowing the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Skilled performers (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) depicted the survivors in dual eras. Several prize nominations followed, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.

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

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and their coping with awful experiences, the story grew padded and excessive. This involved a wearying pattern of highlighting added personalities (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Common Phenomenon

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and settled into familiar patterns. At times, programs must stop while successful.

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, writers understand when narratives find completion. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, return repeatedly with declining quality. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Perfect Example

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, living rent-free in our imaginations, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the quintessential youth program, lasted for only one season yet felt epic in scale: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. The conclusion provided no neat resolution, 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 mourned its end and drafted follow-up stories to answer some of those questions. It might only live on an old hard drive, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Special Relationship

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more series can conclude appropriately.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.