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This scenario is painfully common. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended flawlessly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with dedicated fans to decode subtle references pointing toward upcoming twists.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. By the next installment, a key performer makes a choice that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. And by the disappointing finale, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Downside of Overextension

Wishing for cancellation can only be retrospective; most fans protest when their favorite shows are canned before they can get off the ground. Take Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody featuring Jeff Goldblum, which was binned by Netflix due to low viewing figures. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, and every episode hit the right marks. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, creators confidently planned five seasons to fully explore the narrative. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of 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. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their coping with awful experiences, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. A fatiguing tendency emerged of introducing peripheral figures (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's aggravating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

A Common Phenomenon

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Series like Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and settled into familiar patterns. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Ideal Model

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, occupying our minds endlessly, cliffhangers and all. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. The classic teen series, the quintessential youth program, concluded after a single run but was cinematic in its scope: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. 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 mourned its end and drafted follow-up stories to address unfinished business. 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 series can conclude appropriately.

• The author writes about the arts, music and fashion.