Television Icarus

Game of Thrones. Stranger Things. Euphoria. Yellowjackets. Pretty Little Liars. YOU. Remember the times when we used to get 9 seasons of 40 minute good writing with a new season once a year. Now it is almost standard for shows to have years between seasons with less and less episodes each time. All to wrap up in a way that completely decimates the original story that we knew and fell in love with. Why does success seem to completely destroy the writing of the story?

I've coined the concept of Television Icarus to be a disease of the success from a TV show. Television Icarus manifests in three forms—amnesia, misdirection, and overextension. Amnesia is the "forgot what made it good" symptom. Could you guess what sparked the idea for this post? For those who aren't fans of Stranger Things, its series finale aired New Years Day and it was crap. I have been a fan of that show since 2017 and was thoroughly disappointed with the amount of unanswered questions, ruination of characters, and plot armor enveloped around the 6th season. The same can be said for Game of Thrones; these works that began as art and resulted as a means to an end is why I am skeptical of writer-brother-pairs. Truly, to write something so great and then ruin it for selfish purposes or laziness or just for fun I don't know but WHY? It's like the success from the show suddenly becomes more important than the actual story—so much so that suddenly there are 2 years in between seasons that only get longer as the show goes on. They also begin to ruin beloved characters that better suit the numbers than the story. Euphoria is a victim of this as well. You cannot tell me a five year time jump was in the original plan—it was a result of the 4 years in between seasons. Writers in the amnesia division become so aware of the show's cultural weight that they stop writing intimately—they stop writing like they care about the characters. The characters become symbols, or archetypes, instead of people that the fans have loved for years. I'm still upset about Daenerys Targaryen. This becomes so noticeable, not just because of the assassination of character traits, but also because it's like they forgot all of the rules of their own world. What happened to the toxic air in the Upside Down? Now we can just have a helicopter in there? What happened to the duration of travel from Westeros to Winterfell that takes months? Not a single day? What happened to the suitcase worth $10k that Rue stole? The drug dealer just forgot?

Shows that tackle more thriller-mystery plots manage to follow suit in a different manner—with the second symptom of Television Icarus. Misdirection. This is when the writers prioritize outsmarting the audience over telling a coherent story. The original story idea is thought out remarkably—enough to add layers to it for seasons to come. However, the writers noticeably start to care more about thwarting the audience than staying true to the original story. Pretty Little Liars for instance, fans had managed to guess who "A" was far before the official reveal because it was the logical answer. In light of this, the writers had prioritized derailing the audience from finding the answer so much that the answer became a character they made up two weeks before the episode aired. I'm exaggerating when I say two weeks, but the reveal was most definitely not who the original character was supposed to be. Gossip Girl is similar in this way—it was fairly obvious who the anonymous gossip-blog-CEO was supposed to be and they changed it to someone that was clearly drawn out of a hat with how little sense it made. The mystery of the show suddenly becomes a chess match with the viewer to ensure no one but the writers know how the show will wrap. The same can also be said for Yellowjackets. While I can't speak for a terrible ending stemming from the success of the show because it hasn't finished yet, I can certainly say that there is no good way to wrap the show with one final season left. The original idea was so perfectly layered with nuance and drama tied into a thriller box, but now it seems that the hours of foreshadowing provided previously, has been sacrificed for shock-factor and it's gross. Fix it, Yellowjackets writers.

Lastly comes the final symptom of Television Icarus: overextension. This I feel is the purest Icarus moment because it starts with a story with a clear cut beginning and natural ending that keeps going because it can, not because it should. Numbers suddenly matter more than the narrative, and the original premise erodes under the weight of its own longevity. The 100 for example. I honestly feel like I am the only one who even bothered to finish it because of how far removed it got. Within this division also comes characters who act against their established core morals to generate more plot. YOU with Penn Badgley is also a bit of a victim of this. The show started to rely heavily on plot armor and increasingly extreme character pivoting to justify Joe's unscathed path—and, personally, I feel this began once my favorite character Love Quinn had gone. By season five, the story isn't really deepening in the way it did for the previous seasons—it's stretching desperately trying to prove it still has somewhere to go. Grey's Anatomy is also a victim of this, that show has gone on for far too long.

Amnesia forgets, misdirection distracts, and overextension insists. Television Icarus seems less like a creative failure and more like a possible side effect of success. When a show becomes profitable, culturally dominant, or untouchable, the story itself stops being the priority. Once a show proves it can survive on name alone, the writing shifts from intentional to opportunistic. Time between seasons are extended, characters are bent, and endings are postponed indefinitely, not because the story demands it, but because the audience will show up anyway. Ironically enough, this post started as a rant for how disappointed I was from the Stranger Things finale and it turned into a thesis paper I didn't even realize connected this way. Honestly, it pains me to live in a time of live action remakes that flop, and reboots that are garbage, so when I see an awesome original idea turn sour from a taste of success, I practically mourn. Television Icarus isn't about flying too high—it's about refusing to stop when the story has already said everything it needed to say, or ruining what it has already said.