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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. The second series of your top TV show premieres online, and optimism runs high. Season one ended with such precision: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. After the season wrapped, you scoured online forums with fellow enthusiasts to uncover hidden hints illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. The writing appears robotic and uninspired. Cut to the second episode, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. Halfway through the season, the writers appear to have memory loss concerning narrative arcs clearly established previously. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you long for an earlier termination.

The Curse of Overextension

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Consider Kaos, a clever mythological satire 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.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I now wish it had been a limited series. The first season boasted an inventive concept, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Skilled performers (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Several prize nominations followed, 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.

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. In place of exploring post-rescue life, and their struggle with traumatic memories, we were taken in directions that bloated the original premise. This involved a wearying pattern of highlighting added personalities (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and witnessing a great series decline into annoyance is disheartening.

A Common Phenomenon

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. 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. 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, producers recognize appropriate conclusion points. However, the magic fades with series like Big Little Lies, originally a limited series, return repeatedly with declining quality. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Perfect Example

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. My So-Called Life, the ideal adolescent show, lasted for only one season but was cinematic in its scope: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the filming captured a fall aesthetic, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, yet this mirrors real life accurately of never having real, definitive answers to the open-ended questions from your teenage years. After 18 great episodes (and one mediocre), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself to address unfinished business. Despite existing on obsolete equipment, it shows how series resonate profoundly.

The Sacred Bond

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

• Priya Elan covers entertainment and style.