Shows Like The Duffer Brothers' Hit and The Survival Drama Are Turning Overstretched. I Strongly Prefer the Limited Series

This scenario is painfully common. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show has just begun streaming, and optimism runs high. The debut season ended so perfectly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?). In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to find some Easter egg clues shedding light on future developments.

Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. Cut to the second episode, your favorite cast member has done something that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious the creators forgot around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. And by the disappointing finale, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Downside of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; most fans protest when their favorite shows are canned before they can get off the ground. Consider Kaos, a clever mythological satire starring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. Yet audiences can console themselves that their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and every episode hit the right marks. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Excellent actors (with Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. There were multiple award nominations, 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 coping with awful experiences, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of introducing peripheral figures (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

An Increasing Pattern

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. Yet the spell breaks for programs including 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 wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, occupying our minds endlessly, unresolved threads included. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. My So-Called Life, the ideal adolescent show, ran for just one year yet felt epic in scale: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, 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 youth queries staying forever open. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to answer some of those questions. It might only live on an old hard drive, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Unique Connection

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more shows can end gracefully.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.