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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The follow-up season of your beloved TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended flawlessly: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?). In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints 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. By the next installment, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. And by the disappointing finale, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Curse of Overextension

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. Take Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody featuring Jeff Goldblum, which Netflix dropped over poor ratings. Yet audiences can console themselves that their enjoyment of the series won’t have been muddied by a sophomore slump.

Considering the thriller Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Excellent actors (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, and the showrunners proudly announced there would be five seasons to develop the plot thoroughly. However, a season four finale was just confirmed. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

The show has made narrative choices that have undermined its heart. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their struggle with traumatic memories, the story grew padded and excessive. That included the show’s tiring habit of introducing peripheral figures (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Growing Trend

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 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, 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 Supreme Instance

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, residing permanently in our thoughts, unresolved threads included. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. The classic teen series, the ideal adolescent show, concluded after a single run but was cinematic in its scope: 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. The ending left questions unanswered, but this reflects truth appropriately of youth queries staying forever open. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, it shows how series resonate profoundly.

The Special Relationship

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more series can conclude appropriately.

• This writer focuses on cultural topics.