The all-at-once season is younger than most people assume, and it is already being walked back. It entered the mainstream in 2013, when Netflix began dropping full seasons of its originals against an industry standard of weekly episodes. By the early 2020s the reversal had started, led by Disney+, which found weekly release worked commercially. Two reasons are given for it. Showrunners increasingly asked not to be released in bulk, treating the pacing of a story as part of the work itself. And there was a suspicion (argued rather than demonstrated) that a series consumed over a weekend leaves less of a mark than one that occupies a conversation for two months. Netflix's own response in 2024 was to split its biggest seasons in half, which is neither model and tells you the question is unsettled inside the companies too. The public preference is clear but not overwhelming, and it sits beside a second finding worth noticing: only 14% of viewers say they never binge, so even most people who prefer weekly release are bingeing something.