Reed Hastings must be spinning in his metaphorical grave. The man who promised to liberate us from cable's tyranny has delivered us right back to it.

Netflix has quietly bumped its standard ad-free plan to $20 per month, completing a decade-long journey from disruptor to the very thing it sought to destroy. When the service launched streaming in 2007, the pitch was simple: unlimited content, no commercials, for less than a cable subscription. Now we're paying cable prices, watching ads on the cheaper tiers, and getting our favorite shows canceled after two seasons because they don't fit some algorithmic engagement metric.

According to CNBC, this marks the fifth price increase in the past seven years. Remember when Netflix was $7.99? Those days are as dead as Blockbuster.

Here's the cultural tipping point we're hitting: streaming promised liberation. Watch what you want, when you want, without commercial interruption. Now? We've got subscription fatigue, content silos, ads creeping back in, and prices that make cable packages look competitive. Add Bob Iger's Disney bundle, David Zaslav's Max, Paramount+, Peacock, Apple TV+ — and suddenly you're paying $80+ per month for what used to be included in one service.

The industry will tell you this is about "sustainable content creation" and "premium programming costs." Translation: Wall Street wants profit margins, not just subscriber growth. The era of cheap streaming subsidized by venture capital is over.

So where does that leave us? Right back where we started, except now the remote is a smartphone and the DVR is an algorithm that decides you'd really rather watch whatever show has the highest "completion rate."

In Hollywood, nobody knows anything. Except that history repeats itself, and consumers will only tolerate so much before they start dusting off their Plex servers.

Congratulations, Netflix. You've become your own villain origin story.