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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The follow-up season of your favorite TV show drops on your platform, and you're brimming with anticipation. Season one ended flawlessly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. In the months since the finale, you delved into fan discussions 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 seems as if the creative team was swapped for algorithms. Cut to the second episode, a key performer makes a choice that fans unanimously declare inconsistent. As the story progresses, it’s clear that the showrunners have had collective amnesia concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Pitfall of Too Many Seasons

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; audiences frequently rally against early axings. Take Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody with 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.

Looking back at the horror-mystery show Yellowjackets, I prefer it had remained a self-contained narrative. The debut offered a richly imaginative setup, with ten flawless installments. In 1996, a plane carrying an all-girl high school football team crashes in the middle of nowhere. Excellent actors (featuring Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) played the characters across timelines. 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. This news brought me relief.

Young actors prepare for Stranger Things' next chapter.

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. That included the show’s tiring habit of bringing in and focusing on new characters (including the flat character Callie) who did nothing for the broader story. It’s frustrating, and as a viewer, it is depressing to see your favorite show morph slowly into a hate-watch.

A Growing Trend

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. 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, initially a one-season story, return repeatedly with declining quality. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Perfect Example

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, living rent-free in our imaginations, mysteries intact. My top series ever followed this pattern. My So-Called Life, the quintessential youth program, lasted for only one season yet felt epic in scale: its characters were difficult and contradictory, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the scripts transcended typical youth dialogue. The conclusion provided no neat resolution, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of youth queries staying forever open. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. It might only live on an old hard drive, but it speaks to how deeply TV shows can chime with us.

The Sacred Bond

If TV creators can remember the sacrosanct relationship between viewers and shows, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• Priya Elan focuses on cultural topics.