Whatever Happened to Halloween Episodes?

A Love Letter to the Television We Grew Up With

Twenty-two episodes, Halloween specials, mid-season finales and a whole week to recover from a cliffhanger. Somewhere between streaming services and eight-episode seasons, I think we've lost a little of the magic that made television so special.

I can still remember the little blonde twins from Pretty Little Liars. Two seemingly innocent girls, a disagreement over a doll and a story that becomes considerably more disturbing than anything involving children's toys has any right to be. It's been years since I first watched that Halloween episode, and yet the image has stayed with me. I remember the unsettling atmosphere, the costumes, the mysteries and that wonderful feeling of watching a television series temporarily become something entirely different, just because Halloween had arrived.

May Baciquetto Executive Editor

For anyone wondering what I'm talking about, I'm referring to The First Secret, the Halloween special from the second season of Pretty Little Liars. It's the episode where Alison tells a terrifying story about two sisters, one of whom murders the other after an argument over a doll. Naturally, because this is Pretty Little Liars, even a seemingly innocent scary story comes with enough unsettling details to keep fans discussing possible connections to the show's mysteries for years. And when one of those mysterious little girls appears again in the following season's Halloween special, This Is a Dark Ride, things become even more interesting

I loved those episodes. I loved how the writers could take characters we'd been following for months, dress them in ridiculous or beautiful costumes, place them in an unusually creepy situation and give us something that felt completely different from the rest of the season without losing what made the series special in the first place.

And lately, I've found myself wondering why we don't seem to get that experience nearly as often anymore.

Perhaps it's because Halloween is approaching, or perhaps I've simply become one of those people who can't stop talking about how wonderful television used to be. But the more I think about the series I grew up watching, the more I realise that what I miss isn't just the Halloween specials themselves. I miss the twenty-two-episode seasons, the mid-season finales, the ridiculous storylines, the episodes where absolutely nothing particularly important happened and, most of all, the excitement of having something to look forward to every single week.

I miss television being an event rather than something we consume over a weekend.

And I think Halloween episodes are the perfect example of everything we've gradually lost.

When Halloween Was an Event

There was a time when October meant that some of our favourite television characters were about to have a very interesting week. Depending on the series, that could involve a costume party, a supernatural mystery, a murderer hiding behind a mask or an elaborate storyline that seemed to exist almost entirely because the writers wanted to have a little fun.

And I absolutely loved it.

Pretty Little Liars understood this particularly well. Its Halloween episodes weren't simply ordinary instalments with a few pumpkins scattered around the background. They were events, complete with elaborate costumes, frightening stories and enough mysteries to keep fans questioning everything they'd just watched.

I absolutely adored those Halloween specials. The First Secret took us back to a time before Alison's disappearance, while This Is a Dark Ride somehow made a Halloween-themed ghost train seem like a perfectly reasonable place for a group of teenagers already being stalked by an anonymous tormentor. The costumes were beautiful, the mysteries were ridiculous in the best possible way, and they even created a Halloween version of the show's iconic opening sequence! I mean, how wonderful was that? They didn't just give us a Halloween storyline; they made the entire episode feel like a celebration of the occasion, right down to the opening credits. It's such a small detail, but it's exactly the kind of effort I miss. The writers knew these episodes were special, and they made sure we felt it too.

But that was the beauty of it. These episodes were allowed to be extravagant, strange and occasionally a little ridiculous, while still contributing to the world we'd become so invested in.

And of course, I can't talk about Halloween and television without mentioning one of my all-time favourite series, The Vampire Diaries.

I grew up loving Mystic Falls, its complicated relationships, its supernatural disasters and its impressive ability to turn practically every town celebration into a potentially life-threatening event. The Halloween party in Haunted, from the first season, and the masquerade ball in Masquerade, from the second, are perfect examples of the atmosphere I loved about the series. They weren't simply celebrations happening in the background; they became part of the drama, giving us memorable scenes while allowing the characters to interact in settings that felt different from their everyday lives.

And that's something I miss terribly. There was a certain charm in watching characters we'd grown attached to celebrate holidays, attend school dances, organise parties or spend an entire episode dealing with something that wasn't necessarily the most important event in the history of the universe.

Sometimes, I just wanted to see them have fun.

Of course, considering the alarming mortality rate at Mystic Falls events, having fun was apparently a luxury nobody could afford for very long.

But at least they tried.

Twenty-Two Episodes and a Little Room to Breathe

I know this might be an unpopular opinion in an era when eight episodes are apparently considered an entire television season, but I genuinely miss longer shows.

Give me twenty-two episodes. Give me a mid-season finale that leaves me emotionally devastated, followed by several weeks of waiting to discover what happens next. Give me a season divided into 1A and 1B, with two separate periods of excitement throughout the year. In many ways, it felt almost like getting two seasons annually, and I absolutely loved that.

But what I miss most isn't necessarily the number of episodes. It's what those episodes allowed us to experience.

When a series had twenty or more episodes to tell its story, there was time for things that didn't immediately advance the central plot. We could spend an episode following a particular character, learning more about their past, exploring an unexpected friendship or watching them deal with something relatively ordinary. Sometimes the characters would attend a party, take a trip or find themselves caught up in a storyline that had very little to do with whatever enormous threat was waiting for them at the end of the season.

And somehow, those moments often became the ones I remembered most fondly.

The Vampire Diaries is a particularly good example of this for me. Over eight seasons, we spent so much time with those characters that watching them became almost a routine. We saw friendships develop, relationships change and characters grow into completely different versions of themselves. Some episodes focused on a particular person's history or emotional struggles, while others allowed relationships to develop through seemingly insignificant conversations.

When something terrible happened to a character, I cared because I'd spent so much time getting to know them. I'd watched them make mistakes, celebrate small victories, fall in love, argue with their friends and occasionally behave like completely ordinary people, despite the fact that vampires, witches and supernatural disasters were constantly interfering with their lives.

And I think we're losing some of that intimacy with modern television.

Don't misunderstand me. I love plenty of contemporary series, and there are some absolutely wonderful productions being made today. But when a season consists of eight episodes, often released after a considerable wait, there simply isn't the same amount of room for those smaller stories. Every scene seems to need a purpose, every conversation has to contribute to the main storyline and every episode is expected to move us closer to the finale.

But sometimes I don't want the plot to move forward quite so quickly.

Sometimes, I want to watch two characters sitting in a kitchen having a completely pointless conversation. I want to see them celebrating a birthday, going shopping, arguing over something ridiculous or simply spending time together without a dramatic revelation waiting around the corner.

I want those little moments that make fictional people feel real.

And that brings me to a series I genuinely adore.

Dear Bridgerton, I Just Want a Little More Time

I love Bridgerton. I love the costumes, the romance, the beautiful settings and the way the series manages to make an evening at a ballroom feel like the most dramatic event in human history. I've become invested in its characters, enjoyed the relationships and eagerly followed the stories unfolding within the Bridgerton family.

But there's something I've always wished the series could give me more of.

Time.

Not necessarily more dramatic storylines, more elaborate romantic declarations or even more scandalous revelations from Lady Whistledown. Sometimes, I simply wish I could spend longer with the characters while they aren't doing anything particularly important. The show is called “Bridgerton” and I do miss seeing the Bridgertons.

I'd love more scenes of the Bridgerton siblings teasing one another, having ordinary conversations or getting involved in silly family disagreements. More moments of couples simply enjoying being together without another misunderstanding threatening to destroy their relationship. More time with the supporting characters, whose lives and personalities could become just as interesting as those of the central romantic leads.

And perhaps that's why I sometimes find myself wishing Bridgerton had the kind of episode count that older television dramas enjoyed.

Imagine spending twenty episodes with the Bridgerton family instead of eight. Imagine having room for a Christmas special, an episode dedicated to a particular sibling or an entire storyline revolving around a ridiculous family celebration. We could watch relationships develop more gradually and discover little details about characters that might never become essential to the main plot but would make us love them just a little more.

I know that an elaborate period drama involves very different production demands from a contemporary television series, and I'm certainly not suggesting that creating twelve additional episodes would be a simple task. But I do wonder how much more attached I might feel to some of these characters if I had the opportunity to spend a little longer with them.

The third season of Bridgerton, for example, was released in two parts, with four episodes arriving in May 2024 and the remaining four in June. That division gave viewers time to discuss what they'd watched and speculate about what might happen next, something I genuinely appreciated.

But splitting eight episodes into two releases still isn't quite the same as spending months following a twenty-two-episode season.

And I think that's the distinction that matters.

I don't want more episodes simply for the sake of having more content. I want more opportunities to become emotionally attached to the people whose stories I'm following. I want the silly conversations, the friendships, the small celebrations and the occasional episode that exists simply because the writers have something entertaining they want to explore.

Because sometimes, the scenes that don't seem particularly important to the plot are the ones that make us care about everything else.

Remember When Television Could Be a Little Ridiculous?

Another thing I miss about older television is how willing it seemed to be to experiment.

We had Halloween specials, Christmas episodes, flashbacks, alternative realities, musical episodes and occasionally storylines so wonderfully bizarre that you couldn't quite believe someone had convinced an entire production team to film them.

And the best part was that we accepted it.

Take Buffy the Vampire Slayer, for example, which famously gave us the musical episode Once More, with Feeling. An entire episode in which characters suddenly began expressing themselves through song, because apparently fighting vampires and dealing with supernatural threats wasn't quite enough entertainment for one week.

And while not every experiment worked perfectly, I loved that television had room for these ideas.

A series could spend one week delivering an emotionally devastating episode and the next experimenting with an entirely different storytelling style. Halloween was particularly perfect for this because it offered writers the opportunity to explore something a little darker, stranger or more playful without completely abandoning the identity of the show.

These episodes also gave us a chance to see familiar characters in unfamiliar situations, which is part of what made them so enjoyable. Watching someone who normally spent their time dealing with complicated relationships suddenly get involved in a haunted-house mystery or a Halloween costume party could reveal a completely different side of their personality.

And sometimes, that was enough.

The Week Between Episodes Was Half the Fun

Now, this is where things become a little more personal, because my relationship with television wasn't limited to what happened on the screen.

In fact, some of my favourite memories of watching The Vampire Diaries have very little to do with the episodes themselves.

They have everything to do with Twitter.

I originally created my Twitter account because I wanted to talk about The Vampire Diaries. I wanted to share theories, react to episodes and find other people who were just as emotionally invested in the lives of fictional vampires as I was. And back then, finding those people was an adventure in itself.

I was living in Brazil, where the episodes weren't always available to watch through an accessible official service at the same time as their original broadcast. So, like plenty of fans at the time, I would search for ways to download them online, including through pirated copies, just so I could keep up with what everyone was discussing.

Was it the most convenient way to watch television? Absolutely not. But I still remember the excitement of finally finding the latest episode and knowing that, somewhere on the internet, hundreds of other people were just as desperate to discover what had happened.

And then came Twitter.

I would open the app, search through hashtags and find people discussing the exact same scenes that had left me screaming at my screen. We'd share our favourite moments, argue about relationships, defend our favourite characters and spend an unreasonable amount of time coming up with theories about what might happen next.

Eventually, I started creating fan accounts, and what had begun as a simple desire to discuss a television programme became something much more important.

I made friends.

Real friends, people I genuinely connected with because we happened to love the same fictional world. Some of the friendships I formed through those conversations became an important part of my life, and it's rather extraordinary to think that a television series could have brought together people who might never otherwise have met.

And the weekly release schedule played an enormous part in making that possible.

When a new episode of The Vampire Diaries aired, there was a particular excitement surrounding it. Everyone knew when it was coming, everyone had been waiting for it, and for a little while, our timelines would become completely consumed by whatever had happened in Mystic Falls.

Watching television felt like participating in something.

We weren't simply consuming a story individually. We were experiencing it together, discussing it while the excitement was still fresh and spending the following days wondering what might happen next.

And that's something I don't think streaming services have quite managed to replace.

When Did We Start Watching Everything at Once?

I know that binge-watching has its advantages, and believe me, I'm certainly not going to pretend I've never spent an entire day watching episode after episode of a series I couldn't put down.

There's something wonderful about discovering a show with several seasons already available and knowing that you can keep watching without having to wait for the next instalment. In fact, part of what I miss about those older, longer series is the pleasure of having so many episodes to binge-watch in the first place.

But I think there's an important difference between choosing to binge-watch a series and having an entire new season released at once.

When every episode becomes available on the same day, the experience changes. Instead of having a week to discuss a particular revelation, we're suddenly trying to avoid spoilers from people who have somehow managed to finish the entire season before we've even had breakfast.

Conversations become more complicated because everyone is watching at a different pace. Someone has finished episode eight, someone else is still on episode three, and another person is desperately trying to stay away from social media because they don't want to discover who dies in the finale.

And by the time everyone catches up, the excitement sometimes feels as though it has already moved on.

Of course, not every modern series follows this model. Some streaming services still release episodes weekly, while others divide seasons into separate parts, and I'm always pleased when a programme gives its audience a little time to breathe between instalments.

But I miss when that shared anticipation was simply part of the normal television experience.

I miss knowing that an entire community would be discussing the same episode at approximately the same time. I miss the theories that became increasingly ridiculous as the week progressed, the fan accounts posting edits and screenshots, and the excitement of discovering that someone on another side of the world was feeling the same as I was.

Maybe that's why I still remember those little blonde twins from Pretty Little Liars so clearly. It's not just because the story frightened me, or because Halloween episodes were particularly entertaining. It's because those moments became part of an experience that lasted far longer than the forty minutes we spent watching them.

And while I know television will continue to change, I can't help wishing we'd occasionally bring a little of that magic back.

Give me a Halloween special, a ridiculous costume party, twenty-two episodes and a week to recover from an unnecessarily dramatic cliffhanger.

I promise I'll be on Twitter discussing every single detail.