Why is it taking so long for my favorite show to come back?

Just a few weeks ago, fans of Euphoria got some news about the series: HBO announced that filming for the third season will start in January 2025. In other words, three years after the second batch of episodes aired. Apple TV+ also recently set a date for the return of Severance: January 17, almost three years after the first season premiered. Squid Game became a global phenomenon in September 2021, and its second season will be released on December 26, 2024, more than three years later — 1,195 days later to be exact (although the wait for the third and final season will not be as long, it is scheduled for 2025). When The Handmaid’s Tale returns, presumably in the summer of 2025, with its sixth and final season, its fans will have waited almost three and a half years. There will also be a three-year wait between the last two seasons of Stranger Things, the fifth installment of which is expected sometime in 2025. Fans of Bridgerton have already been warned by the show’s showrunner, Jess Brownell, that they will have to be patient and wait at least two years to see the episodes focusing on Benedict.

It’s not just a feeling, it’s a reality: series are making their fans wait longer and longer between each season. In recent years, between pandemic shutdowns and strikes, the delays could be justified, but in that case, we would be talking about a few extra months. A few days ago, Entertainment Weekly published an article titled “Stop making us wait so long between seasons of shows… please?” It’s not new demand. Back in 2018, Vox published a story titled “Why Your Favorite TV Shows Are Off the Air for So Long Between Seasons.” The article mentioned the shows Better Call Saul, Atlanta and Westworld, and recalled that The Sopranos was one of the first series not to rush the release of its next season. At that time, The Sopranos was the exception, now, it is the norm.

Back then, experts were already predicting that this trend would only get worse: “Viewers should get used to those long gaps. [...] We’re not there yet, but it’s not unimaginable to envision a future where new seasons of TV shows are treated like movie sequels, arriving every two or three years and becoming major events when they premiere,” said critic Emily St. James. That “not unimaginable” future is today’s reality.

There are several explanations for these long waits. The premiere of an annual season is common in traditional television, which is governed by television schedules with clear and defined dates and must plug in gaps: if a season starts in September and ends in May, there’s no other choice but to maintain a production chain that keeps the pace going. In years with no strikes or pandemics, TV viewers only have to wait until the end of summer for their favorite series to return. But now streaming is leading the way, and there are no clearly established dates.

On the one hand, or as a consequence of this, each series now has fewer episodes on average, so they take less time to air or are even available in full from day one. If Stranger Things can be binge-watched in one day, the wait for the next season will be longer than if it had been aired on TV over two or three months. These are also series with higher production value and greater narrative ambition, so the script and post-production processes take longer, as does filming. And, on the other hand, the increase in audiovisual production means that the creators, the technicians and the actors have much busier schedules that are sometimes difficult to fit together. That is one of the reasons why The Bear filmed the third and fourth seasons in a row, so that its stars can free themselves up and undertake other projects.

It’s long been understood that television is a medium that demands patience, but lately it not only demands patience, but also an amazing memory. There are show summaries and reminders of different kinds, but the shift towards airing each season further and further apart is not only harmful to productions for this reason. It also means series lose momentum, that wave of interest that is so hard to achieve in the crowded media landscape. What’s more, with so much time in between each season, it is more difficult for the viewer to reconnect with the story and the characters as they did in the past.

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