This scenario is painfully common. Season two of your beloved TV show drops on your platform, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended with such precision: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues 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, your favorite cast member has done something that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. As the story progresses, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.
The Curse of Too Many Seasons
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 clever mythological satire featuring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.
Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The first season boasted an inventive concept, 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. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) depicted the survivors in dual eras. Numerous awards recognition occurred, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to fully explore the narrative. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. I felt grateful as a viewer.
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 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 (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.
An Increasing Pattern
Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. Occasionally, series should end on a high note.
Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, TV creators know when to stop when the story has naturally reached an endpoint. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, initially a one-season story, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.
The Perfect Example
I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, residing permanently in our thoughts, mysteries intact. My top series ever followed this pattern. This beloved 90s drama, the ideal adolescent show, ran for just one year but achieved film-like breadth: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of adolescent uncertainties remaining perpetual. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Though stored on outdated technology, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.
The Special Relationship
If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more shows can end gracefully.
- This writer covers entertainment and style.
