[This article contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of Severance, “Cold Harbor.”]

As everyone who’s watched its finale by now knows, Severance‘s second season ended with no more resolution than its first, with the “innie” version of Mark S. choosing not to leave Lumon Industries’ severed floor—functionally erasing himself from existence—in favor of staying in control of his body alongside his lover, Helly. It’s a bold, potentially frustrating end to a highly celebrated season of TV, a definite cliffhanger opening doors for what the conflict between Mark’s inner and outer selves might turn into. (To say nothing of the bizarre practicalities of Mark and Helly trying to stay alive in the bowels of a company they’ve just launched a major assault on.) But it also wasn’t the only cliffhanger that series executive producers Ben Stiller and Dan Erickson were considering to end the season on.

This is per interviews that both men gave to Variety this week, as part of a post-mortem on the finale, with Stiller revealing that the season could have ended at an earlier point. I.e., at the moment when Innie Mark is deciding whether to walk through the door with his rescued wife Gemma. “There was a brief moment where we thought, maybe we do another cliffhanger where Mark is between Helly and Gemma,” Stiller revealed, a decision that would have left fans in suspense about which direction the character would take. “But, pretty soon after, we realized we can’t do that again—people will kill us. So, we wanted him to make the choice and set up a dystopian conflict.” The result, then, is a cliffhanger not predicated on what a character will do, but on how the consequences of his massive decision will come done upon both his head, and those of everyone around him. (Or, to put it in Stiller’s more poetic phrasing, an ending about: “Young love running into the pit of hell.”)

And how soon will those consequences come to pass? Stiller and Erickson also addressed that (vaguely), with Erickson claiming that steps have taken to ensure that the gap between season 2 and the just-confirmed season 3 isn’t as massive as the nearly-three-year- lacuna between seasons 1 and 2. No promises, though: “We’re hoping that there are no massive strikes or pandemics or fissures opening up in the crest of the Earth that end up delaying us,” Erickson said. “Barring that, I’d certainly hope that we’d get this one out a bit sooner. But, Severance has always been a show that takes a long time to make, and we’re proud of what we came up with, even though it took quite a long time.”