This topic is extremely relevant to one of the weird problems my comic is having: I keep gaining subs, but my views keep going down with every episode I post. Clearly I'm having difficulties bringing people back. If it's a matter of binge readers waiting to read a chunk, well, that doesn't explain why episodes from, say, September 2015 still have way less views than my subs. We're talking 2k+ difference in numbers... and if we're talking very recent episodes, 4k-5k. Yikes!
I'm with @kurapikasuki in that I hate recaps, and I think ideally, readers would figure out the past page connections in the comments section. It feels too hand holding-y when the author has to spell it out. One of my favorite reveals in fiction explained something that was shown only once, over two years prior (yes, it's a webcomic). If the author had explained it in the notes, that would have ruined it for me.
I think recaps are more helpful for catching prospective NEW readers/watchers rather than keeping existing ones. Especially with a TV series, you don't want to force new watchers to watch from the beginning.
