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Many viewers know this disappointment. Season two of your beloved TV show drops on your platform, and optimism runs high. Season one ended so perfectly: future plotlines were teased tantalisingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. During the hiatus, you scoured online forums with other hardcores to find some Easter egg clues illuminating what would happen next.

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. 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 concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Pitfall 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. Take Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody 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 prefer it had remained a self-contained narrative. The first season boasted an inventive concept, and every episode hit the right marks. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Skilled performers (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. There were multiple award nominations, creators confidently planned five seasons to develop the plot thoroughly. Recently, news broke of a season four conclusion. This news brought me relief.

Gaten Matarazzo, Finn Wolfhard, Caleb McLaughlin and Noah Schnapp in the forthcoming fifth season of Stranger Things.

Story decisions have weakened the core. In place of exploring post-rescue life, and their coping with awful experiences, the story grew padded and excessive. That included the show’s tiring habit of bringing in and focusing on new characters (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) who did nothing for the broader story. It's aggravating, 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 no longer surprise audiences, and embraced predictable tropes. Sometimes shows need to quit when they are ahead.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Supreme Instance

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, occupying our minds endlessly, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. My So-Called Life, the perfect 90s teen dramedy, ran for just one year yet felt epic in scale: the roles were challenging and multifaceted, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the conversations avoided cliched adolescent writing. The ending left questions unanswered, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to resolve lingering mysteries. It might only live on an old hard drive, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Unique Connection

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

• Priya Elan focuses on cultural topics.