This is not to say that seasons after the first one are bad, but sometimes I feel as though later seasons exist because of the show’s popularity and not because the creator had more to say (The Last of Us, even though I love Part II). Also, it’s okay to have an open-ended ending with loose ends, leave it to our imagination on what’s going to happen next (Westworld).
Our current obsession with sequels and prequels is terrible. The thing about a good story, with good characters, is that it typically starts around the time The Most Interesting Thing is happening to the characters, and concludes around the time the Most Interesting Thing is also wrapping up. That’s why the book/movie/game/song exists, to tell about this time The Most Interesting Things happened to these people. By definition then, a prequel tells some lesser story that leads up to the MIT. If the prequel was the most interesting story, then it would be the story, not a spinoff.
Same shit with sequels. You’ve told the story, the characters are done. If there was more, you should have finished telling that story. Now obviously, there’s long stories that have smaller arcs and take place over several installments.
Like Lord of the Rings. 3 (technically 6) books that tell one overarching story, a very interesting one. Each book has a story, but the whole set also has an overall story that wraps up nicely. The Hobbit, the OG, also tells one whole interesting story. Note how LotR isn’t also Bilbo’s story. Now note how the movies fucked this up by turning the Hobbit from its own story into a LotR prequel, as though actually all these films are Gandalf’s story, or something like that.
The current trend of grinding every iota of money out of any idea, based on Lore and not characters or big ideas, has sucked all the meaning and import out of these things.