Stranger Things (2016-2025) came back after three and a half years and lost 23% of its viewers.
And yet, as per a recent report by market research platform Luminate Intelligence, the drop is one of the industry’s better outcomes.
Other delays that stretched over years proved far costlier. Wednesday (2022-Present), for instance, took a 59% drop upon returning after 2.75 years, while The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022-Present) lost 57% of its audience coming back after two.
The figures appear in Luminate’s 18-page analysis about launching albums and series in a crowded marketplace, and the conclusion is blunt: “Long breaks between seasons usually lead to audience shrinkage for hit series”.
Specifically, analysts identified a threshold of around 18 months past, which, in the U.S. market at least, average views fell for every title Luminate sampled.
“Lengthy gaps between seasons of TV have been a persistent headache for streamers, with the annual premieres once met even by blockbuster cable series like Game of Thrones no longer standard procedure,” the study details. “And while megahits such as Stranger Things can still return after multiyear breaks to massive viewership, a long hiatus (more than 1.5 years) for streaming series typically leads to a reduced audience,” the analysis cautions.
Surely enough, the opposite end of the spectrum brought in predictable results. In cases of TV shows like The Pitt (2025-Present) and Landman (2024-Present), which both brought back second seasons almost exactly a year after their premieres, The Pitt more than doubled its estimated audience (132%), while Landman’s audience spiked by 52% year over year.
Unscripted TV shows have also been able to capitalize on this very predictability. The Traitors (2023-Present), airing each winter, and Love Island USA (2019-Present), airing each summer, for example, both posted breakout ratings over the past two years.
One title bucks the pattern, however. The Night Agent (2023-Present), where viewership dropped between seasons 2 and 3 despite a short gap, though Luminate notes that this followed a bigger falloff after season 1, which was when the action thriller had come back from a nearly two-year break.
Luminate acknowledges the obvious problem in all this. Streaming platforms clearly want faster turnarounds, but actually being able to deliver shows with shorter breaks is no easy task, particularly considering how many shows carry heavy post-production loads and visual effects schedules that require more time than is practical.