>>149860774
>What the fuck happened between S3 and S15?
After season 3 is when the first movie came out, which also coincides with the original creator leaving. He wanted the show to end with the movie but it was too much of a cash cow for Nickelodeon to let it end.

A lot of the fanbase consider "after the movie" to be when the series turned bad similar to how fans of the Simpsons consider ~season 10 or earlier to be when "the Simpsons became bad".

Hillenberg did return for a bit years later for a little but he eventually died in 2018. Now that he's dead Nickelodeon has gone full into trying to milk the franchise with multiple spin-offs and increased rates of movies (which is not what Hillenberg wanted).