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Many viewers know this disappointment. Season two of your beloved TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended with such precision: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with dedicated fans to uncover hidden hints illuminating what would happen next.

Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. It seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. By the next installment, your favorite cast member has done something that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. Halfway through the season, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia 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

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; most fans protest when their favorite shows are canned before they can get off the ground. Consider Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology with 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 now wish it had been a limited series. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. There were multiple award nominations, producers originally mapped out a five-season arc to tell the story in necessary detail. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. 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.

Plot twists have diluted the essence. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their coping with awful experiences, the narrative expanded unnecessarily. A fatiguing tendency emerged of highlighting added personalities (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.

A Common Phenomenon

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Programs including Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and settled into familiar patterns. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

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, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, come back for more and more with diminishing returns. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Perfect Example

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, occupying our minds endlessly, cliffhangers and all. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the ideal adolescent show, ran for just one year 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 this reflects truth appropriately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation 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 Sacred Bond

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more shows can end gracefully.

• This writer covers entertainment and style.