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Many viewers know this disappointment. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show premieres online, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended with such precision: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a main character had – cliffhanger! – been offed (or had they?). After the season wrapped, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to find some Easter egg clues pointing toward upcoming twists.

Unfortunately, the return episode disappoints. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. By the next installment, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss around the storylines aggressively signposted in season one. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Downside of Prolonged Runs

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Look at Kaos, a delightfully satirical take on Greek mythology featuring Jeff Goldblum, axed by Netflix because of weak audience numbers. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. A 1996 plane crash strands a female soccer team in wilderness. Skilled performers (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, creators confidently planned 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 their coping with awful experiences, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of highlighting added personalities (such as Shauna’s two-dimensional daughter Callie) who added little to the overarching plot. It’s frustrating, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Common Phenomenon

However, Yellowjackets isn't alone. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things lack original impact, and settled into familiar patterns. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Actually, benefits come from self-contained series. Considering Sharp Objects, I May Destroy You, and 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, originally a limited series, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Hopefully, Adolescence’s producers have thought twice about that rumoured season two.

The Supreme Instance

I desired Yellowjackets as a single-season show, residing permanently in our thoughts, mysteries intact. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. This beloved 90s drama, the quintessential youth program, ran for just one year but achieved film-like breadth: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the visuals were beautifully seasonal, and the scripts transcended typical youth dialogue. 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 was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to answer some of those questions. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Special Relationship

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more shows can end gracefully.

• This writer writes about the arts, music and fashion.