So 2025,
I bring this up for a few reasons.

The Last of Us had a 2 year wait between seasons 1 and 2, viewership drastically dropped. Not expected back until 2027

The Sandman had a 3 year gap between seasons and before season 2 even started, it got cancelled. Nobody seems to be talking about it either.

House of the Dragon just started production on season 3. Not expected back until sometime in 2026

and now FUBAR got cancelled after a 2 1/2 year gap between seasons.

Strange New Worlds just came back after a 2 year wait.

So do these super long gaps completely kill your interest in once popular series? And you just move on to something else.

I know some of you care and some of you don't. Just curious to see what the consensus is. It's not like the old days when we would have a shortage of TV shows to watch. or things slow down in the summer or slower times of the years. Programming seems to run non-stop year round and most can't keep up.

HBO used to produce new seasons of series every year, but now it seems like we're lucky to get a new season in 24 months.

Depends on the series. No problem jumping right back into Strange New Worlds and will pick right back up with House of the Dragon. Other shows like Yellowjackets and even Stranger Things… I have forgotten what happened and haven’t had an interest to go back and catch up.

I watched the first episode of Fubar like a month ago and quickly forgot about it. Won’t even bother now that it’s cancelled.

Absolutely and I told HBO exactly that when I filled out the survey after I canceled.
It especially pisses me off because you have to wait that long for like 7 fucking episodes.

For the most part, yes. But if the seasons don't end on cliff hangers or rely heavily on a prior season story (not the DVDTalk mod ) then it's fine.

I have ZERO issue with it. If it takes longer than a few months to shoot and produce a high-profile series, so be it. There's a lot more logistics to shooting House of the Dragon than there is for NCIS. Now that there is YouTube, I can get caught back up.
Seriously, how would Shogun Season 2 possibly come back in 12 months? Or Fargo Season 5, when every season has to shoot in the snow?

I don't know. Game of Thrones somehow managed to produce it's first 7 seasons yearly. No one ever complained about quality and "needing more time" Then everyone started saying they need more time to film, special effects etc. And then 1 year changed to 2, now sometimes 3.

not kill but 100% very strongly weaken

Weaken is a good way to describe it.

Two and three year gaps between seasons of series that have ten or fewer episodes -- especially if they're densely plotted or serialized -- can definitely dampen my enthusiasm, and makes me want to just wait until they're over and binge them at my leisure.

Yeah, I feel like I need to go back and rewatch to get back in the series, and I don't want to spend the time on that when there is so much I have not watched at all.

That's how I feel as well. More than half the time I decide I wasn't that into the show in the first place and not a priority to keep up with. The shows I really care about I have no issue waiting between seasons.

I’m part of the problem, I guess. After watching the first season, I have yet to watch the second season of Last of Us, House of Dragons, or The Sandman.

I tend to forget about them and then not have much interest once I see they’re back.

I have caught every season of Reacher and Jack Ryan, but I wonder if a large part of that is because each season is largely self contained. I have an easier time watching another season of a show 2 or 3 years after the last season aired if they’re isn’t a ton of information I still need to know for the new season. Something like House of Dragons seems almost inexcusable to have such a long gap when there’s so many details you’re expected to remember.

I don't like a long wait and it may kill the buzz, but if it's a good show I'll be watching it. The gap between the seasons of Severance felt like forever, but I really wanted to watch it. The same goes for The Last of Us and the viewership for the first episode was still really high. The drop came with the 2nd episode and I do understand why.

Fubar just wasn't very good, so I'm not surprised that Schwarzenegger's name alone didn't work twice and I'm sure that the next season of Stranger Things will be a huge success for Netflix.

Fargo is something that I don't mind since they are stand-alone seasons with different characters.

Something like ST-SNW doesn't bother me either since the episodes are generally stand-alone.

But something like Foundation - that is a continuing arc - I'm waiting for the current season to finish - that's much harder.

My thoughts exactly.

It's been like 6 years and I am still hoping for a season 2 of Vagabond, a Korean action show I watched.

3 years used to be the standard for non horror sequels in film so I'd say no. If a show is great, I'll wait. I couldn't even finish the first season of Fubar but I'll be watching House of the Dragon for sure.

Depends on the show. With GOT, I made it a thing to do a complete rewatch before each new season when there were long gaps. With Last of Us, I haven’t watched the second season, and I played both games. I also just checked to see if I ever watched season 2 of House of Dragons. I’ll watch season 3 whenever it happens; that’s what YT recaps are for. I was a bit taken aback when I wanted to watch a sequel or season from about 10 years ago and there was no recap lol.

I wish there weren’t long gaps, but accept that there are logistics involved, including cast availability.

I might counter that, for "prestige TV", a longer wait makes a show feel a little more special. A new season of House of the Dragon or The White Lotus or Stranger Things or Severance feels like an event. Everyone is watching it and talking about it at the same time.
A new season of shows that come back every year like The Bear or Hacks or Only Murders in the Building is often greeted with a shrug and "Is that back already?"

They kind of get put to the back of the queue. There's so much to watch or not watch right now.

It really kind of depends on the series. For instance, I still haven't watched season 2 of House of the Dragon or the Last of Us because I know I need to refresh to watch them, and I just don't feel like doing that yet. For Andor and Severance, I watched lengthy recap videos before diving back into the show.

After Superman, i decided to rewatch season one of Peacemaker in total because outside of some of the big moments I just didn't remember enough about it. The new James Gunn podcast as an addendum helps here. I'm sure I'll just dive back into Strange New Worlds with the previously on recap being sufficient for that. It'll probably be the same for Stranger Things because there is a sameness to that show. I remember enough about how season 4 ended.

I do not like the long gaps . . . but I would rather have the long gaps than have a show come back with nothing to say or add just because




Last of Us is one that I do not understand . . . I would have thought that they knew where it was headed, so why not film 2 and 3 back to back? Seems as if that would be more cost efficient, but Hollywood accounting makes no sense.

Also, add me to the 6-8 episodes every few years is a killer. If that's all we get, I'd rather wait for it to get through it's run and be over so I can watch it without interruptions. I've long said that I watch very few shows while they are airing. I didn't watch GoT until the COVID times.

Is The Last of Us out of source material? I know there are only two games, and two seasons.

Considering how Game of Thrones started going off the rails as they ran out of books to adapt, I can understand them wanting to slow-walk this series.

The 2nd season tells only part of the 2nd game. The story of the game is told out of two perspectives and the 2nd season only told one of those.

Regarding Game of Thrones: I don't think that the running out of books was the biggest problem. They just rushed the last season. I'm pretty sure the same storylines would have worked way better if they gave them more time. I never thought that the plot was the problem, but the delivery and that had nothing to do with the missing source material. The last season was just too short, to tell those stories.

Agreed... two 8-ish episode seasons to wrap it up would have worked much better.

This is why I started re-watching the season finales of previous seasons to refresh my memory. For example, I managed to forget that ST Strange New Worlds previously ended with a cliff hanger.