Why Top Streaming Shows Are Cutting Down on Season 2 Episodes

When Netflix’s The Diplomat made its return for a second season in October, a year and a half after its successful first season debut, the excitement of fans was tempered by a bit of letdown as the new season only featured 6 episodes, down from 8 in the first season—a shorter format more common to British TV than American.

The Diplomat isn’t the only show experiencing this trend. Several popular series that have recently launched their second seasons—or are about to—have fewer episodes than their predecessors. Like The Diplomat, the second season of Netflix’s drama The Recruit also has just 6 episodes, a reduction from its first season’s 8 episodes. Similarly, the forthcoming second season of Netflix’s comedy XO, Kitty has been trimmed to 8 episodes from 10 in the first season.

This pattern extends beyond Netflix. Hulu’s thriller Tell Me Lies recently premiered its second season with 8 episodes, down from 10 in its first season.

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Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters and HBO’s House Of The Dragon both saw their second seasons reduced to 8 episodes from 10.

Several factors contribute to these changes. Some creators prefer to tell their stories in fewer episodes, while timing constraints, particularly for global streaming services needing several months to localize content in various languages, add to the already lengthy intervals between seasons. These delays were further exacerbated by the Hollywood strikes in 2023, which pushed back the release of new seasons by up to six months, affecting all the mentioned series.

For established hits like Netflix’s Stranger Things or global sensations like Squid Game, these delays are less impactful. However, for newer series with serialized formats, such delays can be damaging as they struggle to maintain momentum in a competitive content landscape. This was evident with FX’s The Old Man, which saw a delay of two years and three months between its first and second seasons due to the strikes, leading to a significant drop in viewership and the eventual cancellation of the series starring Jeff Bridges.

The Recruit, Bad Sisters, and Tell Me Lies all launched their second seasons more than two years after their first. For The Diplomat, House of the Dragon, and XO, Kitty, the gaps were over 18 months.

Budgetary considerations are also influencing these decisions, with streaming services tightening their belts and sometimes opting to reduce episode counts to save on costs.

Often, it’s a mix of these various factors.

As previously reported by Deadline in March 2023, the second season of House of the Dragon was initially planned to be another 10-episode season, similar to its first. This plan was later adjusted, resulting in script changes and moving a major battle scene to season three. This decision was part of strategic changes following HBO’s acquisition by Discovery, although HBO emphasized that the reduction was driven by narrative needs.

According to HBO, the decision to cut down the episode count was made early in 2023, partly as a precaution against production delays caused by the strikes, allowing the series to meet its summer 2024 premiere schedule. The second season debuted in June, 22 months after the first season premiered.

Decisions regarding the episode counts for the second seasons of The Recruit, XO, Kitty, Tell Me Lies, and Bad Sisters were also influenced by the streaming platforms.

Creative preferences played a role in some cases, such as with Tell Me Lies, which maintained its eight-episode count for the upcoming third season. For The Recruit, whose second season consists of six episodes released almost 24 months after the initial eight, changes included a studio acquisition and a complex international production schedule.

Meanwhile, HBO’s hit drama The Last Of Us, based on the popular video game, had 10 episodes in its first season, with a reduction to 7 episodes planned for the upcoming second season.

The decision to shorten the season was explained by the series’ co-creators/executive producers, who felt that the natural breakpoint in the story occurred after seven episodes. However, they noted that the third season is expected to be significantly larger.

Netflix’s The Diplomat is also expected to return to its original eight-episode format in its third season.

Series creator Debora Cahn, in an interview with TVLine, admitted that reducing the second season to six episodes was her choice, although Netflix preferred eight. She cited exhaustion and tight schedules as reasons for the reduction.

The Diplomat was renewed for a second season one day before the start of the WGA strike on May 2, 2023. Cahn and her team hurried to complete the scripts by then, and filming began in June. The production faced a brief halt when SAG-AFTRA also struck in July 2023 but resumed in December.

The strikes also delayed the start of the second seasons of The Recruit and Tell Me Lies, which began filming in January 2024. XO, Kitty started its second season production in April 2024, compared to March 2022 for its first season, with both seasons wrapping in June of their respective years due to the reduced length of the second season.

The six-month halt caused by the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes created a backlog of content at most streaming services for the latter half of 2024 and into 2025, further extending the gaps between seasons.

“If we had known it would be a year and a half before we returned to air, it would have been different,” Cahn remarked regarding the episode count for Season 2.

To minimize the wait between the second and third seasons, The Diplomat received an early renewal before the second season even premiered. Netflix recently took similar action with The Night Agent, delaying its second season debut to January 2025 from the initially planned 2024 release, resulting in a 22-month gap between seasons—though it retained its 10-episode count.

In some cases, series have expanded in their second seasons. Apple’s Shrinking wrapped its second season with 12 episodes, up from 10 in its first season. Onyx’s Reasonable Doubt for Hulu increased from 9 to 10 episodes in its second season. Both series have been renewed for a third season.

Despite the reductions, the series with shortened second seasons have generally performed well, suggesting that a smaller episode count hasn’t necessarily diminished their success. It’s still too early to assess Bad Sisters, which just recently concluded, but the other series, The Diplomat, Tell Me Lies, and House of the Dragon, have all been renewed for a third season.