This Fantasy Show’s Surprise Return in 2026 Signals a Better Future for Streaming TV

Those tuning in for the Disney+ fantasy series Percy Jackson & the Olympians might have been surprised to see the Season 2 finale end with a teaser for the next installment, which is due to release later this year. While it had been confirmed that a third season was on the way, it's rare for shows to confirm a return so quickly, considering the massive delays that often occur in production and filming. Many TV shows used to air 22 episodes within a season, but streaming's increased budgets have left audiences waiting much longer for their favorite shows to return. Percy Jackson & the Olympians dropping Season 3 later in 2026 may not be an indication that the entire system is changing, but it could represent a return to a more regular release schedule for streaming TV.

Percy Jackson & the Olympians is under specific pressure to return in a timely fashion; not only do seasons need to be greenlit quickly so that the young leads won't age out of their roles, but the series itself needs to ensure that the audience retains interest after the hiatus. Although there was a slightly longer break between the first and second season because a renewal wasn't guaranteed, Percy Jackson & the Olympians has already seen the effectiveness of this strategy based on the strong ratings for its latest batch of episodes. A shorter turnaround time doesn't mean that a series is any less of an event; it actually suggests that the studio considers it to be a priority.

Streaming Shows Need To Take Advantage of Their Audience's Attention

While the idea that expensive, blockbuster television shows take much longer to produce has been a familiar narrative, it hasn’t always been that way. Game of Thrones was able to regularly deliver its new seasons yearly, despite having more episodes than its spin-off, House of the Dragon, which has been operating with two-year breaks. The trend of viewers waiting an extended amount of time between seasons is a new phenomenon that makes the market more untenable because of confused expectations. A gap within a show that has already been a proven success, such as the two-year window between Season 4 and 5 of Mad Men, can be justified when a series already has a captive audience willing to wait. However, it's much harder for shows that are just starting to develop the same degree of loyalty; will anyone care about a second season of Ahsoka or 3 Body Problem, which are slated to air over three years after their debuts?

Streaming shows have benefited from consistently returning for new seasons, resulting in their viewers staying engaged with the complexity of their stories. Netflix’s The Diplomat wouldn’t have been as big a hit if it weren’t able to develop storylines that were relevant to current events in global politics. Similarly, the quick return of Fallout on Prime Video allowed the audience to remain up to speed on a highly detailed universe with significant worldbuilding. (Despite being one of the most expensive shows ever made, Fallout has also succeeded through following the more traditional rollout of releasing a new episode every week, rather than Season 1’s binge-drop.)

Some of TV's Most Acclaimed Shows Have Followed a Predictable Release Schedule

It’s no coincidence that some of the most acclaimed shows of recent years remind audiences of traditional television. The definitive breakout show of 2025, The Pitt, may have been able to incorporate the explicit content that wouldn’t have flown on ER, but it also returned with a new 15-episode season right after winning the Emmy for Best Drama Series. It’s not only a case of striking while the iron is hot, but keeping its cast and crew employed; from an awards standpoint, it’s also not hard to see why Emmy voters preferred The Pitt to Severance, which had a three-year gap between seasons that was filled with production obstacles. However, a consistent release schedule does not mean that shows should be painted into a corner creatively; The Bear, Only Murders in the Building, and Hacks are about as different as comedy shows can get, but they’ve all returned regularly without sacrificing their ambitions. Considering that The Bear stars Jeremy Allen White and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have made time to appear in other projects, shows can’t use the excuse of “scheduling issues” to justify gaps.

While no showrunner would want to be in a position in which they’re forced to sacrifice the quality of their work in order to meet a scheduled airdate, an extended gap between seasons doesn’t necessarily guarantee quality. Season 2 of HBO's The Last of Us took a sizable break in between seasons, but still wasn’t able to account for the inherent challenges within the source material; similarly, the long wait for Stranger Things to return only created more expectations for the show to deliver, and made the disappointing series finale sting even harder. The new rules of streaming services have indeed given showrunners more room to test the limits of the medium, but expectations regarding episode counts, runtimes, and release windows were successful for decades, and for good reason. Marvel Studios learned this the hard way with Daredevil: Born Again, when it became clear that having a writers' room and a consistent showrunner was a better option than trying to create different limited event series that existed between new films within the MCU. Whether Daredevil: Born Again, Hacks, and The Diplomat will all live up to the hype for their new seasons remains to be seen, but shows like The Pitt and Percy Jackson & the Olympians are already representing an important shift in a positive direction for streaming.