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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show has just begun streaming, and you're brimming with anticipation. The debut season ended flawlessly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to decode subtle references pointing toward upcoming twists.

Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. 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 fans unanimously declare inconsistent. As the story progresses, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. By the lackluster conclusion, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Pitfall 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. Look at Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology with Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, with ten flawless installments. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. Several prize nominations followed, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to tell the story in necessary detail. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. This news brought me relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

Plot twists have diluted the essence. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, and watching how they deal with their horrific new secrets, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of bringing in and focusing on new characters (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Growing Trend

But it’s not only Yellowjackets. Series like 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. At times, programs must stop while successful.

The thing is, there are joys to be had in a limited, “one-and-done” series. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and Adolescence, TV creators know when to stop when the story has naturally reached an endpoint. However, the magic fades with series like 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 wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, residing permanently in our thoughts, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, lasted for only one season yet felt epic in scale: its characters were difficult and contradictory, 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, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of youth queries staying forever open. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak 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, it shows how series resonate profoundly.

The Sacred Bond

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

• The author focuses on cultural topics.