The Wait Between TV Seasons Is Getting Longer, It’s Not Your Imagination
It’s been a two-year wait for the upcoming third season of HBO’s House of the Dragon. The second season of Apple TV+’s Severance was a three-year wait, as was the final season of Netflix’s Stranger Things.
At this point, waiting years for a new season isn’t at all unusual.
According to a new study by Ampere Analysis, the average wait between seasons of TV shows on major streaming platforms has reached what is almost certainly an all-time high.
The study reports the gap has gradually doubled over the last decade — from an average of 10 months in 2016 to 16 months in 2021 to 21 months in 2024 and 2025. Prior to 2016, shows taking less than a year to return were the industry norm.
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That said, a show taking a long time to return doesn’t necessarily reduce interest. In fact, shows that took more than 30 months between seasons (such as Netflix’s Wednesday) had the highest viewer engagement.
Unsurprisingly, sci-fi and fantasy titles that require considerable VFX work tend to be the shows that have the longest waits. Since HBO’s Game of Thrones, streamers have invested heavily in cinematic event shows that can break through the clutter amid an average of 600 scripted shows a year. Such shows tend to require a longer production schedule (yet Thrones, many forget, managed to regularly churn out a new season annually until its seventh-and-final season, which took two years).
Such gaps come with some risk — 54 percent of the study’s respondents said they would be likely to cancel a service subscription due to long waits for engaging content.
“Many original shows build highly dedicated audiences that remain loyal despite increasingly long waits between seasons,” said Christen Tamisin, Senior Analyst at Ampere Analysis. “However, streamers need to balance blockbuster production timelines against a steady flow of content. Extended gaps may generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when major shows are back on screen.”
That risk is likely higher when courting younger viewers. Recently, another study by Dentsu and IGN Entertainment showed that more than half of Gen Z users said they will cancel and renew streaming services to “chase a single title” rather than just buy and hold a subscription service. The study claimed “platform loyalty is effectively dead.”
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