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It's an all-too-familiar feeling. Season two of your beloved TV show has just begun streaming, and your mind is full of hopeful expectation. The initial run ended with such precision: narrative threads were dangled enticingly, and a key figure faced a shocking fate – or did they?. After the season wrapped, you delved into fan discussions with fellow enthusiasts to find some Easter egg clues 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 key performer makes a choice that viewers recognize as jarringly uncharacteristic. As the story progresses, the writers appear to have memory loss regarding plot points heavily emphasized earlier. As the underwhelming ending arrives, you privately hope it had ended sooner.

The Downside of Too Many Seasons

Wanting a series to end early is often late realization; viewers usually oppose premature cancellations. Look at Kaos, an amusing Greek myth parody starring 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 now wish it had been a limited series. Season one had a creatively abundant premise, and its 10 episodes were note-perfect. Aircraft disaster leaves a teen girls' team isolated in 1996. Top-notch cast members (including Juliette Lewis, Lauren Ambrose and Sophie Thatcher) portrayed the team then and now. Numerous awards recognition occurred, creators confidently planned five seasons to develop the plot thoroughly. But last week, it was announced that it would end with season four. I felt grateful as a viewer.

Young actors prepare for Stranger Things' next chapter.

Story decisions have weakened the core. Instead of focusing on the survivors' reintegration, and their coping with awful experiences, 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 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 settled into familiar patterns. At times, programs must stop while successful.

Indeed, pleasures exist in single-season stories. From Sharp Objects to I May Destroy You to Adolescence, TV creators know when to stop when the story has naturally reached an endpoint. But the game is over when shows such as Big Little Lies, first conceived as self-contained, extend endlessly with reduced impact. Maybe Adolescence's creators hesitated about continuing.

The Supreme Instance

I wish Yellowjackets could have been a one-and-done series, living rent-free in our imaginations, mysteries intact. My favorite TV show of all time has played out like that. This beloved 90s drama, the ideal adolescent show, lasted for only one season yet felt epic in scale: 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. The ending left questions unanswered, but that is perfectly in keeping with the reality of adolescent uncertainties remaining perpetual. After 18 perfect episodes (and one dodgy one), I felt devastated and created my own continuation to resolve lingering mysteries. Though stored on outdated technology, it demonstrates television's powerful connection.

The Special Relationship

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

• Priya Elan writes about the arts, music and fashion.