How long is too long to ask a fandom to wait?

The Waiting Game: When Fandom Patience Runs Out

Over the past decade, I’ve noticed a trend where shows, games, and series ask fans to wait longer for conclusions to their favorite stories. Initially, fans were willing to wait because something was better than nothing. However, in this golden age of media with hundreds of series being produced, asking fans to "wait" has become increasingly unreasonable.

Game of Thrones

Take Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon Season 2 for example. It’s the latest in a long line of series pushing their fandoms away with excessive waits. The season ended recently, and I felt nothing but disappointment. The episode itself was good, but the context of the series and the wait made it unsatisfying.

Game of Thrones ended in a rushed mess as the showrunners, eager to start on Star Wars projects, sped through the final season, giving fans a decade-long investment a lackluster conclusion. Book readers, who had stuck with the series for nearly 20 years, were especially upset by the hasty wrap-up.

Now, five years later, House of the Dragon makes the opposite mistake with the same outcome. Season 2 drags on where Season 8 of Game of Thrones sped through. This season violated a key rule of storytelling: promises and payoffs.

The Problem with Long Waits

Season 1 of House of the Dragon was a great prologue, setting up the deadly and meaningless Dance of Dragons. It gave fans hope after the Season 8 mess. But two years later, Season 2's weekly releases stretched over two months without delivering the cathartic release was utterly disappointing to me. The finale ended on another cliffhanger, asking fans to wait two more years for a story they could already read in its entirety. Why keep waiting when the only promise is spectacle that never comes?

Eroding Goodwill

These asks erode a fandom’s goodwill towards the show. The longer the history with a series, the quicker this goodwill erodes. Many fans, like me, were looking for some kind of epic payoff that never arrived. While I understand the difficulty of producing shows and meeting audience expectations, this wasn’t the issue here.

Game of Thrones had a winning formula: 10 episodes per season, with episode 9 delivering spectacle and episode 10 setting up the next season, with a one-year wait in between. Thanks to COVID-19, production schedules changed, leading to fewer episodes and longer waits, despite the pandemic being largely in the past. Deviating from their own formula causes cognitive dissonance within the fandom. The audience knows what they like and the show trained them on these expectations. Changing the formula without a good reason burns audience goodwill.

Comparisons with Other Series

Other series like Call of Duty Zombies, Ju Jitsu Kaisen, and post-Endgame Marvel face similar issues for different reasons. Each promises, “Just wait until the next episode/chapter/series/movie! Then you’ll be satisfied!” But the payoff is always delayed, exhausting fans and turning them away from the series or, worse, into haters. Many haters are just fans who didn’t get the payoff they were promised, leading them to hate-watch the series instead of abandoning it altogether. This misfire catalyzes vitriolic discourse, derailing the good vibes train into endless internet shouting matches.

Although Ju Jitsu is currently moving on from a 8 month long single battle! An interesting dynamic for the series will be to see how audiences receive the animation vs the week to week manga releases. When there is a weekly or monthly release for content, it again falls into training a fandom to expect a formula. Any deviation from that is going to be a hurdle to overcome. Oftentimes creators need to drop their brand all together and pivot if they want to make a big enough change. Many of my friends speculate Ju Jitsu Kaizen will be received well as a binge watched show vs the unsatisfying weekly cliffhangers for over a year if you include the previous arc. I excitedly await to see how that series and its reception turns out.

Conclusion

In conclusion, while waiting can sometimes build anticipation, prolonged and repeated delays without adequate payoff can erode fan loyalty and goodwill. The entertainment industry must balance creating high-quality content with maintaining a reasonable release schedule to keep fans engaged and satisfied. Otherwise, they risk alienating their most dedicated supporters and tarnishing their legacy. Which has happened for every series I mentioned.

So what is the winning formula? It depends! It depends on the series, the context, and the promises they have given to their fandom. Authors like Brandon Sanderson are masters at setting up their readers and fandoms for success. I’d say everyone could take a lesson out of Brandon Sander’s expertise because he is the current master of storytelling promises and payoffs.
-Reed