Season finales that ended mid-crisis were once standard and are now comparatively rare. The device was tied to a release pattern that has largely disappeared.
The cliffhanger solved a scheduling problem
Broadcast seasons ended in spring and returned in autumn, leaving months in which a viewer could easily forget a show existed and form other habits.
An unresolved ending gave the audience a reason to remember. The open question survived the gap in a way that a satisfying conclusion would not.
It also gave the network something to advertise across the break, since the unanswered question was itself the promotional message.
Full-season releases remove the gap
When a season arrives at once, the pause between episodes is whatever the viewer chooses. A cliffhanger resolves in seconds rather than months, so it functions as a chapter break.
The gap that remains is between seasons, and that gap is now long enough that an unresolved ending risks being forgotten rather than anticipated.
Uncertain renewals raised the cost
A cliffhanger is a bet that the show will return. With renewal decisions less predictable, that bet fails often enough to have damaged the device's reputation with audiences.
Viewers who have been left with an unresolved ending that was never answered become more cautious about investing in a new series at all.
Writers responded by building finales that close their central question while leaving a direction open, which survives cancellation without feeling abandoned.
What replaced it
The more common shape now is a resolution followed by a reframing, where the immediate problem ends and a final scene changes what the next season would be about.
That structure gives the audience the closure that makes a season feel complete while still supplying a reason to return, and it does not depend on suspense surviving a long absence.
Character consequence has taken over much of the work as well, since an unresolved relationship or an unspoken decision holds attention without requiring a plot to hang mid-air.
The device still works in one place
Weekly releases have partly returned on subscription services, and cliffhangers between episodes have returned with them because the week-long gap makes suspense useful again.
The difference is scale. A cliffhanger that carries a viewer across seven days is a modest device, where one asked to carry an audience across two years is doing something the format no longer supports.