After a three-year wait, the first part of the final season of Stranger Things is almost here. While fans are thrilled, the long gap between seasons is becoming a frustratingly common practice in TV. Stranger Things didn’t necessarily start this trend, but it definitely made it more acceptable, especially for big, popular shows. We’re not talking about shows that were cancelled and brought back years later – like Arrested Development or Twin Peaks – that’s a different situation altogether.
Look, I get it – Stranger Things definitely wasn’t the first show to take a really long break between seasons. British TV has been doing that forever, and plenty of animated shows have had multi-year gaps. But when it comes to live-action shows with a continuous story, a three-year wait was pretty unusual. Now, ever since seasons three and four of Stranger Things were so delayed, it feels like these huge gaps are becoming the norm. Honestly, it’s frustrating, and I don’t think it’s a good way to keep audiences engaged.
When network television was dominant, TV shows ran for most of the year – typically ten months – with only a short break of three or four months between seasons. Occasionally, a writers’ strike would extend that break, but it wasn’t common. If a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation or Cheers left you on a cliffhanger, you knew the answer would arrive by the summer. While three or four months seemed like a long time back then, it was just the standard wait. You didn’t need to refresh your memory with recaps – because the gap wasn’t that long, and besides, recaps didn’t even exist yet.
The rise of high-quality, critically acclaimed television – often referred to as “prestige TV” – really began with the premiere of The Sopranos on HBO in 1999. After that, shows on cable typically had a year-long break between seasons, and sometimes even longer – up to 16 months between seasons of The Sopranos. This became the standard for ambitious TV shows of the 2000s, like Mad Men, True Blood, and Dexter. However, even these longer waits didn’t seem so bad because there was so much great television available. A year felt manageable, especially if it meant the show would be made to a very high standard. But this pattern wouldn’t last forever.
Before the long waits for new seasons of Stranger Things became common, Game of Thrones faced the same issue. The first six seasons of Game of Thrones aired every summer from 2011 to 2017, but then fans learned they’d have to wait two years for season seven. It felt like a very long time! However, a few years later, Stranger Things raised the bar, announcing a three-year gap between seasons three and four. After that, it seemed like many other popular, ongoing shows on streaming services and cable television decided to adopt a similar strategy of making viewers wait extended periods for new content.
The first season of Stranger Things premiered in 2016 and became an instant hit. The creators, the Duffer Brothers, followed it up quickly with a second season the next year. However, after the second season received a more mixed reaction, they took more time developing the third, which arrived in 2019. By that point, audiences were accustomed to longer waits thanks to shows like Game of Thrones, so the delay didn’t seem too bad. But then the gap between seasons three and four stretched to three years. This was particularly frustrating because season three ended with a major cliffhanger – fans had to wait just as long to find out if Hopper (David Harbour) was still alive as they did to see Han Solo rescued from Jabba the Hutt.
We understand the long wait for season four was due to difficult circumstances. The COVID-19 pandemic immediately followed season three, disrupting all TV production. However, with the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023 now resolved, there wasn’t a substantial reason for the three-year gap. Stranger Things, being a hugely popular show, essentially set a new precedent, and many other major series have since adopted a similar approach to release schedules.
Many popular shows are now taking increasingly long breaks between seasons. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had a two-year gap, Peacemaker a three-year one, and Severance also waited three years for its second season. While events like the pandemic and strikes are often cited as reasons, it feels like an excuse when shows like The Bear and The Pitt have consistently released a season each year. Some even film two seasons consecutively, which seems like a reasonable solution. We hope the trend of long breaks doesn’t continue, especially if it doesn’t noticeably improve the show, as seen with the three-year wait for Stranger Things. While more time for development can be beneficial, historically, tight deadlines often led to exceptional television.
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2025-11-25 19:03