A sickness has plagued our screens, and the world only watches, literally. The comfort you once found in shows now gets swallowed and coughed back to you in two parts. Gone are the days of 24-episode seasons, now we pay twice the price for half the story. Watching TV used to be the comfort of falling into a steady rhythm. Episodes dropped weekly, characters grew over time and you could sit with a story for months. When you think of classic network runs, even mid-2000s dramas like Grey’s Anatomy or Gilmore Girls churned out over 20 episodes a season. Now, most streaming originals barely cross the 10-episode mark. Even worse, many of those short seasons are chopped into two parts, forcing audiences to wait weeks or even months for the second half. Instead of building momentum, streaming platforms are interrupting it.
Take Netflix's show Wednesday. When sat down to watch what I thought would be an easy spooky-season binge, I was greeted with only half of a season. The rest was scheduled for later. The same thing has happened with Stranger Things season 4 in 2022, when Netflix released seven episodes in May followed by just two more in July. Bridgerton season 3 did it this spring, dropping the first half in May and holding the rest until June. And last fall, Squid Game season 2 followed the same split model. These are not one-off experiments anymore, they have become the playbook for Netflix’s biggest hits.
Part one of a show often feels incomplete, more like a trailer than a full arc. You finish the last episode, the credits roll and instead of satisfaction you get the uneasy sense that you’ve been left on read by your favorite characters. Audiences feel strung along, and critics have pointed out the same thing. Tom’s Guide called the split-season strategy “infuriating,” arguing that it interrupts immersion and leaves fans dangling without resolution. The Daily Beast went further, calling it a trend that prioritizes corporate strategy over creative satisfaction, diluting a show’s cultural impact in the process.
This frustration is only amplified when you consider the promise streaming services once made. When Netflix first rose to prominence, it sold itself on freedom. Gone were the days of cable's “cruel” schedules, you got to watch as much as you wanted at once. Binge culture became the brand. Now, that very idea has been repackaged into scarcity. Episodes arrive in small rations, stretched out not to enhance storytelling but to squeeze more out of its subscriptions and engagement from its viewers.
And it is not just Netflix. Disney+ and HBO Max have been shifting away from full-season drops too. According to Fabric Data, Max went from releasing about half of its titles in bingeable form to just 11 percent in early 2025. What was once marketed as liberation has been re-designed as a waiting game.
Streaming executives often defend this approach as a way to extend conversation about said shows. By splitting a season, shows stay in the cultural spotlight for longer. Instead of two weeks of hype and then silence, there is a renewed burst of interest every time part two drops. But split seasons are not the only way to keep people talking. Apple TV+’s Severance proves that you can release episodes weekly and maintain buzz without leaving audiences feeling strung along. The show became a word-of-mouth phenomenon precisely because viewers had time to process each episode, build theories and anticipate what's next. Yet, they still got the satisfaction of a complete season once it wrapped. The same could be said for season one of HBO’s Euphoria or even the cultural juggernaut that was Game of Thrones. Both shows stretched over weeks, dominating online discourse and sparking endless fan speculation, yet didn't make viewers feel cheated out of a complete season.
Netflix executives explained that the model originally came from pandemic-era production delays, when releasing a half-finished season felt better than shelving it altogether. But what was once a temporary compromise has hardened into a permanent strategy. Forbes reported that Netflix now reserves split seasons for its most successful shows, like Wednesday and Stranger Things, because those titles are guaranteed to keep fans subscribed month after month.
On paper, this looks like a win for platforms. Retention stays strong, social media buzz doubles and shows get multiple headlines instead of one. But the audience's experience tells a different story. Half-seasons lack momentum, cliffhangers feel more manufactured than organic and the satisfaction of a cohesive narrative is sacrificed for the churn of the subscription cycle.
This even shifts the language we use when we think about these shows. Think about how you talk about TV now compared to a decade ago. Instead of asking “Have you finished the season?” or “Have you seen the latest episode?”, the new question is “Have you finished part one?” or “Did you see part two?" Even casual conversations about TV are now shaped by this new business model.
The irony is that platforms have spent years trying to recreate what they once disrupted. They moved us away from weekly cable schedules, only to slowly drift back to staggered drops. They convinced us that bingeing was the future, only to tell us that maybe we have had enough for now. And we, the viewers, are caught in the middle, refreshing release calendars and calculating subscription renewals, waiting for the second half of the story we already paid for.
So maybe this epidemic is not just about TV at all. It is about how easily our habits are shaped, how the ways we consume are choreographed around profit — not pleasure — and as streaming platforms keep splitting seasons, we are left to ask ourselves a bigger question: Are we really watching the shows, or are the shows watching us?
Nadirah Vander Linden is a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences. She can be reached at nav27@cornell.edu.
