This probably isn't a hugely common use case but one I have experienced more than once.

Basically, sometimes I will see later episodes of a show for various reasons – it's on cable, I watch it with someone at their place, etc. – and afterwards start from the beginning. However, until I reach the point of the later episode – which could be half a dozen seasons in – my "next episode" will continue to show something I won't get to for another month.

It's not a huge deal since I can of course just find the earlier episodes through the season list but it's definitely more inconvenient than just being able to click a button on the home page.

My proposal is to change the default behavior of (or add an option to change) the 'Up next' list so that the next episode is the one that comes after the user's most recently-watched episode.

For the average user who watches episodes sequentially or even skip episodes, nothing will change for them. For users like myself who occasionally watch episodes/seasons out of order, this will be a great QoL improvement. I cannot think of any drawbacks to this approach and it seems like it should be a simple query change.