One of Netflix’s best sleeper shows in a while, The Diplomat, returns for season 2 next Thursday on Halloween, despite its lack of creepiness. But when viewers log in, they’ll notice something unfortunate: that Season 2 has been cut to just six episodes, down from the eight we got for Season 1.

Naturally, everyone’s first instinct will be to blame Netflix, as it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen episode orders scaled back, likely for budget reasons. That is an understandable conclusion. However, it’s not what happened here. This is actually a judgment from series creator Debora Cahn, which actually said quite a lot to Netflix it didn’t want this:

“It was my decision,” Cahn told TVLine, “(Netflix) wasn’t happy. They wanted the full eight….I was very tired. It was a time thing. It felt like there wasn’t enough time to turn eight of them. A lot had to be done in what seemed like a short time.”

However, it turned out that this did not actually have to happen. Originally, Cahn was told they had less time to complete Season 2, but it ended up being a timeline that was expanded to a new, somewhat industry-standard 18 months. Cahn says that from the beginning, if she knew, maybe she would could made the eight episodes that Netflix (and fans) wanted. So something clearly went wrong here.

Hopefully this won’t happen for season 3, and yes, there will be a season 3 as Netflix really likes the show and already renewed it two weeks ago ahead of the season 2 premiere next Thursday. Production has already started, indicating that things may be back on track and with a good timeline trajectory, an eight-episode season is likely to return. Season 3 is also heading to New York City instead of DC, it seems.

This also shows how weird TV has become, where running eight episodes of a show in over a year that doesn’t require any complicated VFX work still seems barely possible for these showrunners. The Bridgerton creator has also said that they can actually only do that every two years. Times have certainly changed from 22 episodes a year in the broadcast era, and it doesn’t seem like we’re ever going back.

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