Starting a series two years after everyone else is a reasonable thing to do, and the internet is not the main threat to it. The app you are watching in is.
Streaming interfaces are built to keep you moving forward, and several of the mechanisms they use for that are structurally spoiler-shaped. Working through them in order removes most of the risk, and takes about five minutes once.
The episode list is the worst offender
Episode thumbnails are usually pulled from somewhere in the middle of the episode, and episode descriptions summarise the plot. Between them, a season list can give away a death, a reveal or a departure before you have watched a single minute.
The reliable answer is behavioural rather than technical: do not browse the episode list. Play the first episode, then use whatever the app offers to go to the next one at the end, rather than returning to the grid.
Some services show only the current episode's detail while playback is running, which is a genuine improvement if you stay in the player instead of backing out.
Autoplay and the next episode preview
The countdown at the end of an episode frequently plays over footage from the next one. If you watch to the end of the credits, which you should for a lot of shows, you get the following episode's images whether you wanted them or not.
Turning off autoplay for the next episode stops this. It is a separate setting from preview autoplay on the browse screen, and on most services both are stored per profile rather than per account, so switching them off on your device does not affect anyone else. The exact paths differ by service and we list them in how to stop streaming apps autoplaying at you.
Recaps that recap too far
The previously on segment at the start of an episode is assembled by the production and is usually safe, since it only draws on what has already aired.
The risk is the service's own promotional material, which is assembled with the whole season available and is not always careful. Skip promotional videos attached to a series page, particularly anything labelled as a trailer for the season rather than for the show.
The artwork itself
Services choose different artwork for the same title depending on what they think will make you click, and for a returning season that artwork sometimes reflects a late development. There is no complete fix for this, though there are some real controls over what the interface shows you, and clearing finished titles out of the home screen reduces how often you see it.
Outside the app
The two habits that help most are simple.
Mute rather than unfollow. Every major platform lets you mute a phrase, and muting a show's title, its main characters' names and the word finale for a few weeks is more effective than avoiding social media, because it costs you nothing else.
Turn off news notifications from entertainment outlets while you are catching up. Push notifications are written to be readable at a glance, which means the spoiler is in the notification rather than behind a click.
Stay out of the trending rows
The rows labelled trending, popular or top ten are refreshed constantly and use whatever artwork is performing best that week, which for a show in its final season means late-season imagery.
They are also the rows most likely to surface a series you are midway through. Going directly to what you are watching, through search or the watchlist, rather than through the home screen, removes the exposure entirely.
If you are watching with someone else
Two people on one profile means each person's progress shows up in the other's Continue Watching row, which is a quiet spoiler about how far ahead they are. Separate profiles fix it, and they also stop the row filling with things you did not start, which is worth clearing out either way.
A weekly release is the hardest case, because the gap between episodes is where spoilers arrive. The Apple schedules are a useful illustration: Dark Matter runs ten Fridays while Rings of Power drops eight episodes on three dates, and the two demand completely different avoidance habits.
