“Cobra Kai,” “Arcane,” “The Summer I Turned Pretty” and 33 other shows have premiered and wrapped in the time “Stranger Things” has been delayed. It’s taken nine years for the series to finally come to an end. In that time, Millie Bobby Brown has gotten married and adopted a kid. These actors are supposed to be playing high schoolers, yet they’re fully grown adults who look nothing at all like kids.

The rumor at the time was that the delay was due to the Covid-19 pandemic—but it’s been six years since then and other shows have recovered.

I get that the massive action sequences and CGI make this show more technical than a simple rom-com, but Season Four came out in May 2022, so what have they been doing the past four years? Even “Arcane,” a fully animated series—which definitely takes longer to complete—only took three years to release in between seasons.

All this just begs the question: how long is too long for a show to release its next season? This matters more than people think. I seriously don’t remember how “Stranger Things” Season Four ended and couldn’t possibly explain anything that’s happened prior to it either. Releasing this late seems like a disservice to casual fans who enjoy the show without obsessing over it. I remember liking “Stranger Things,” but I don’t want to rewatch more than 40 hours of television so I’m not lost when starting Season Five.

A four year gap is definitely way too long in my book. So what’s a good amount of time?

Producers need to plan ahead and be realistic about how much time they actually need to complete a show. One of my friends said he’s never watched “Stranger Things” because, when it came out, his parents said he was too young, so he just never got into it. Alternatively, the show’s audience might lose interest—especially if the target demographic is kids or teens. Middle school is only three years long, and if your show is targeted towards that age group, your audience won’t even be in the same age group when the next season comes out.

For these reasons, I think three years should be the maximum amount of time between seasons. This just seems like the right number: it’s enough time in between seasons for producers to create something of quality, but short enough thst people will still have remembered what has happened in seasons past.

Of course, just because I want this to start happening doesn’t mean it will. And because the hype around “Stranger Things” is unmatched to other shows, the long wait has made fans even hungrier for the final season. I just hope this season lives up to the hype, and if it doesn’t, then six years wouldn’t have been worth the wait. This is why TV shows need to be produced at a faster rate.