'Emily in Paris,' 'Cobra Kai' are the latest Netflix series seeing their new seasons split into parts. What's behind the decision?
Remember when Netflix would drop an entire new TV season at midnight, episodes ready to be binged by rabid fans the moment the clock struck 12? Not so much anymore — at least for some shows.
The streamer is releasing its latest seasons of fan-favorite series like Emily in Paris and Cobra Kai in multiple installments. While the strategy — to divide a single season of episodes into two or even three parts — isn’t new for Netflix, it has become more commonplace. This has been the case for this year’s split season of Bridgerton and, perhaps most notably, Stranger Things in 2022.
“Split seasons is a bit of a marketing plan, essentially,” Walt Hickey, author of You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everything, told Yahoo Entertainment. “It allows [streamers] to have these contracts remain in force, essentially, with the actors and the production crew. But it allows them to basically get two bites at the apple when it comes to building momentum for a finale.”
The latest series to nab those two bites on the platform is Emily in Paris, the popular romantic comedy starring Lily Collins as an American marketing executive in the City of Light. Season 4, the first five episodes of which premiered Aug. 15, was broken into two parts. The second set of episodes will hit the platform on Sept. 12.
That wasn’t the original plan, according to a producer for Emily in Paris.
“We had actually broken out the season before the writers' strike [in 2023], and so we didn’t have the two parts in mind at that stage,” Joe Murphy, co-executive producer and writer of Emily in Paris, told Deadline about Netflix’s decision. “And after coming back from the strike, that’s when we got the news, ‘Oh, we’re going to be in two parts,’ and so we did actually have to adjust our story for almost like a midseason cliffhanger.”
While that strategy can be helpful for a platform that has less content available to subscribers, it can be a gamble for fans, who are used to consuming all of their episodes at once.
“Some of the split seasons this year [were] somewhat forced upon Netflix. In 2024, we're dealing with the aftermath of the writers' and actors' strike, meaning Netflix's U.S. slate is much lighter than usual,” Kasey Moore, founder of What’s on Netflix, a site dedicated to covering shows and movies on the platform, told Yahoo Entertainment. “Split seasons fill in gaps that would've otherwise been left vacant.”
The benefits to a split season for a streaming service like Netflix include keeping the conversation about the show going over a long period of time and getting two big boosts in viewership, Moore explained.
“Stranger Things was the perfect scenario for a split season: a well-designed two-part series with high stakes and a fanbase who would watch no matter what,” Moore said about the critical decision for Season 4 of the hit series, which arrived nearly three years after Season 3. “I think Bridgerton also fits in this category, with a heavily dedicated audience and, again, a well-structured season that works narratively across two parts. That's reflected in viewing figures that were sustained over a longer period of time and even grew once the second part [was] released.”
However, that also leads to “mixed reactions depending on the [series’] fan base,” he added.
“Most don't seem to mind so long as the wait between batches isn't too long. I think the most distraught fans were Cobra Kai fans, who were told they'd have to wait quite a while for its three parts to drop, to the point where creators have had to apologize and address the long waits on X several times,” Moore said. “I'm sure some will be understanding, but many have grown accustomed to having everything all at once.”
Unlike Emily in Paris, the sixth and final season of Cobra Kai, the comedy-drama series that follows up 1984 film The Karate Kid, is being released in three separate parts.
“Ten episodes, which is our typical season, didn’t feel like enough for us to wrap things up. We wanted to come in for a landing, but we wanted to make sure that we were landing all the planes in the best possible way,” Jon Hurwitz, a Cobra Kai showrunner told Variety ahead of its Part 1 drop on July 18. “When we landed on 15, it felt natural to us to split [the season] up into three parts, three chapters, three acts.”
Cobra Kai fans still have to wait for more. Netflix announced that Part 2 of Cobra Kai Season 6 would arrive Nov. 15, with the final five episodes of the final season dropping next year.
Netflix did not respond to Yahoo Entertainment’s request for comment.
Some fandoms are vocal about their displeasure in waiting for a Part 2. That was generally the response on the popular r/BridgertonNetflix subreddit after Netflix split Season 3 of the Regency-era romance series Bridgerton earlier this summer.
“We think, in general, fans don't like the split season. People got used to binging shows. It's not fun when the story gets abruptly paused. It also puts pressure on the second half to deliver to massive expectations for the fans,” moderators of r/BridgertonNetflix, which counts 291,000 members, told Yahoo Entertainment via Reddit. “This happened to be the case for Season 3 [of Bridgerton]. It looked like (on the subreddit, at least) the second half of Polin's story did not live up to some fan's expectations,” referring to the romantic storyline of characters Penelope and Colin.
In the meantime, it’s anyone’s guess if streamers like Netflix will permanently adopt this rollout strategy — and perhaps only for proven juggernauts — or stick to releasing an entire season in one drop. After all, the goal is to grow an audience for a show and avoid frustrating its fan base.
“They're trying to figure out if there's something between ‘release one new episode every week’ and ‘release all of our episodes at once,’” Hickey said. “And a lot of them are coming around to this idea of ‘we'll do them in two blocks and we'll see how that works.’”
“And yeah,” he added, “we'll see if it works.”
