The wait that is 'killing' Netflix series (and other platforms)

BarcelonaSince streaming platforms appeared, the range of series available to us is greater than ever. At the same time, the waiting time between one season and another is becoming longer. This gap is starting to have an impact on viewing data, according to a study by the data company Luminate, which analyzes cultural consumption. A wait of at least a year and a half translates into a considerable loss of viewers.

In the last decade, the waiting time between one season and the next of a series has doubled. A study by Ampere Analysis from May of this year showed that in 2016, series took 10 months to have a new season. In 2024 and 2025, the wait is 21 months, almost two years. The more technical requirements a production has, the longer the time lapse between batches of episodes. This group of series includes fictions such as House of the Dragon or, back in the day, Game of Thrones and Stranger Things.

Drain of viewers

Luminate Data points out that previously long waits had positive effects, because some viewers took the opportunity to catch up and recovered series they had not been able to see before new episodes arrived. But now a drain of viewers is beginning to become evident, at least in the North American market. One of the most recent cases of this trend is The Gentlemen, the Guy Ritchie series that premiered its second season at the beginning of September, almost two and a half years after the first (the release was in March 2024). In the first three days available on Netflix, the series has recorded 6.7 million views, while the first season, in the same lapse of time, reached 12.2 million views. This represents an audience loss of 45.1%. Nevertheless, the series ranks in third position among the most watched English-language series worldwide. Furthermore, it should be noted that the first season appears in fifth place with 3.2 million views.

Beyond The Gentlemen, the August report from Luminate Data provides other particularly revealing examples, many of them from Netflix. In this list appears Bridgerton, which took almost two years to premiere the fourth season. In the North American market, this delay translated into 20% fewer views compared to the third season during the first 12 weeks. On the other hand, the third installment, which was also delayed by two years compared to the previous season, only lost 7% of its audience, a minimal percentage. Jess Brownell, head of the series, asserted that the technical complexity of the production made it very difficult to shorten the wait, but that for the fifth season they were trying to reduce the time.

There are other productions that have been even more harmed by long waits. From the first to the second season of The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, views fell by 57%, and Wednesday suffered a drop of 59%. In the case of this last series, the waiting period was almost three years.

In not all cases does a longer wait mean a decrease in views. Severance is a small miracle within this trend. The dystopian AppleTV series took three years to have a second season ready, more than enough for viewers to forget about it, especially if we take into account that it is one of the streaming platforms with the least presence. Even so, the powerful marketing campaign launched by the platform and the positive reviews from the press reversed the situation: from the first to the second season, views grew by 273%.

Series with annual periodicity

At the opposite end of all these series are those productions that have set themselves the goal of releasing one season per year. In this select club is The Pitt, one of the dramas of the moment. Noah Wyle's medical series has released two seasons on HBO Max since 2025 and has already announced that the third season will arrive in January 2027. Loyalty to the viewers has resulted in a 173% increase in the number of views.

Another series that does not let much time pass between seasons is Slow Horses, from AppleTV. Its protagonist, Gary Oldman, recently explained at the Edinburgh television festival that managing to make one installment per year and maintaining the level of quality they have was "a battle and a struggle". The actor asserted that for him it was incomprehensible to make viewers wait two and a half years for a series with which they have already established an emotional bond.