“Stranger Things” is about to release its highly anticipated final season this year — in three parts — totaling eight episodes. This all comes after a three-and-a-half year hiatus. “Stranger Things” started almost 10 years ago. This is a problem.
The good ole days
Oh, how we have far outgrown the simpler days of old cable TV with shows like “Lost” and “24.” They had close to 22-24 episodes a season and released every year. Nowadays audiences have to endure long waits. On average, a two-year break for most of the big shows released to streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. This has definitely reached a tipping point with many audiences.
There are a few reasons as to why many services have opted for this model. The first of which is not greenlighting the next season until the current one is considered a success. Companies are looking for sure-things pretty much across the board. We’ve been seeing this trend for more than a decade at this point, but now it’s becoming even more prevalent. This mostly happens with new shows that are going into their first season. “Stranger Things” doesn’t really apply since it became an instant hit. But shows like “1899,” “The OA,” “Cobra Kai,” “The Bear,” etc. were either greenlit after an extended period of time or canceled despite a large and passionate cult following.
Bring on the Binge Model!
The Binge Model also tends to get in the way as well. Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away, shows were actually still shooting and polishing off the ends of their seasons while the beginnings were being aired weekly. This might seem a little risky. There’s the potential to run into road blocks with a ticking clock coming up behind you. That’s how it was back then. The extended seasons also gave the show runners much more runway to be able to do this, giving the audience episodes with shorter wait times and enough time for the show to be made.
Studios now prefer to collect and polish every single episode before being released, so they can dominate the next few weeks when a new season of a highly anticipated show drops. There are still a few shows that operate on the old method like “South Park,” but we recently saw the consequences of this when they had to skip a week in their air schedule when they couldn’t complete it for the week. They in particular, famously play release schedules close to the chest with their “six days to air” mindset.
Production quality a problem?
Finally, the most important and most detrimental part of the current TV show landscape is the emphasis on cinematic production quality. Bigger budgets mean more time and energy placed on perfection in writing, shooting, acting, editing, and finalizing. It’s a great idea in theory, but as we can see, slowing down production can snowball adding on average two years to each season of television. Personally, though, the production quality really doesn’t look much higher than many other shows have been able to pull off in the past.
“Game of Thrones,” for example, was one of these massive shows that gripped audiences. They were able to release 10 high quality episodes both in writing and production value for six years, but then suddenly we’re waiting two years for season seven and eight at a time. Now it’s the norm to not expect a season of “House of the Dragon” for two to three years. There is an over-emphasis on production quality in TV (and honestly in video production in general) that I think is very much misplaced.
It’s gotta have a good plot
The heart and strength of TV specifically is the writing, allowing for deep and long explorations of characters week-to-week instead of two hours at once. The argument against this is the tendency for filler to spring up in here.
I think this is a moot point since some shows with even shorter seasons like many of the “Star Wars” Disney+ shows have six episodes and still have many plot lines and scenes that just seem to stretch the runtime. There aren’t enough episodes to justify bigger arcs for a season yet too many to truncate it to a movie, so we’re in this weird grey area where we get a shoddy version of what could possibly be a good mini-series. Even more ironic, many of the Disney+ shows with short seasons still look pretty bad.
Production quality isn’t a problem with “Stranger Things” or a lot of the other big shows nowadays. However, the frustration of getting short seasons that aren’t always even the best written released with three years in between is grating and needs to change.
The plea
So please, Hollywood, I’m asking for more episodes with lower quality. It makes financial sense and your shows will be talked about over a longer period of time. It will justify the creation of more jobs in the industry. And, audiences will be subscribed for longer, while also feeling like they’re getting more bang for their buck. It really is a no-brainer.
“Stranger Things” Season 5 comes out on November 26, 2025 on the streaming service Netflix.
