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This scenario is painfully common. Season two of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and you're brimming with anticipation. The initial run ended so perfectly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you were perusing Reddit threads with fellow enthusiasts to find some Easter egg clues pointing toward upcoming twists.

Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. In episode two, a key performer makes a choice that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. As the story progresses, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. And by the disappointing finale, you long for an earlier termination.

The Downside of Prolonged Runs

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 starring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that the show's quality wasn't tarnished by a weak follow-up.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and every episode hit the right marks. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Excellent actors (featuring 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. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. I felt grateful as a viewer.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

Story decisions have weakened the core. In place of exploring post-rescue life, 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 introducing peripheral figures (including the flat character Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.

A Common Phenomenon

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Series like Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and settled into familiar patterns. At times, programs must stop while successful.

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. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, return repeatedly with declining quality. 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, unresolved threads included. My top series ever followed this pattern. My So-Called Life, the ideal adolescent show, lasted for only one season but achieved film-like breadth: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, 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, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Special Relationship

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

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