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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. Season two of your top TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. Season one ended so perfectly: upcoming stories were hinted at provocatively, and a protagonist met a mysterious end – or so it seemed. In the months since the finale, you scoured online forums with other hardcores to uncover hidden hints illuminating what would happen next.

And then season two’s premiere is a damp squib. It feels like the entire writers’ room has been fired and replaced by artificial intelligence. In episode two, a beloved actor's character acts in a way that you and Reddit user Fishy2345 agree is totally out of character. By episode five, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. By the lackluster conclusion, you silently wish that the show had just been cancelled.

The Curse of Too Many Seasons

Regretting a show's continuation is hindsight; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Consider Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody starring Jeff Goldblum, which was binned by Netflix due to low viewing figures. But perhaps these fans will rest better with the knowledge the program avoided a disappointing second season.

Reflecting on Yellowjackets, I currently desire it was a one-season story. The first season boasted an inventive concept, and every episode hit the right marks. In 1996, a plane carrying an all-girl high school football team crashes in the middle of nowhere. Skilled performers (featuring 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 tell the story in necessary detail. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. And as a fan, I let out a sigh of relief.

The Stranger Things cast returns for season five.

Plot twists have diluted the essence. Rather than leading with the girls’ return home, 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 (like the underdeveloped daughter Callie) with minimal impact on the main narrative. It's disappointing, and watching a beloved program become tedious is sad.

A Common Phenomenon

Yet this issue extends beyond Yellowjackets. Shows such as Emily in Paris, House of the Dragon, Squid Game and Stranger Things have lost the shock of the new, and embraced predictable tropes. At times, programs must stop while successful.

The thing is, there are joys to be had in a limited, “one-and-done” series. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, writers understand when narratives find completion. Yet the spell breaks for programs including Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Perhaps Adolescence's team reconsidered a second season.

The Supreme Instance

I preferred Yellowjackets as a limited run, living rent-free in our imaginations, unresolved threads included. The best program I've seen succeeded this way. My So-Called Life, the quintessential youth program, ran for just one year but was cinematic in its scope: the personalities were complex and inconsistent, the cinematography was perfectly autumnal, and the dialogue was untethered from the normal “teen speak written by a 35-year-old” trope. Its final episode was bitterly unresolved, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of youth queries staying forever open. Following 18 excellent installments (plus one weak one), I was heartbroken and took to writing season two fan fiction myself 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 Unique Connection

When producers honor the special viewer-program bond, more programmes can bow out when the time is right.

• The author focuses on cultural topics.