Streaming services work in mysterious ways, and it was indeed pretty stunning on Friday when it was announced that Amazon Prime Video’s The Wheel of Time was canceled, and would not be returning for a fourth season.

The show had just seemed to find its groove. Season 1 had an 81% score and season 2 had an 86% score, but season 3? A stellar 97% critic score which you rarely see, especially on Amazon. So what happened here? A few things, supposedly:

• Viewership: While we don’t have exact numbers, we know that even with a great third season, the show’s viewership dipped enough to get into this knife’s edge situation.
• Cost: That’s the eternal ratio, viewership to cost. The first two seasons of The Wheel of Time reportedly cost $260 million. If we’re extrapolating that out, the exceptionally large-score, VFX-heavy series could have taken that total to $390 million if not more, and it would likely hit half a billion dollars if it returned for season 4. Compare that to viewership, and there you go.
• An Ending: The Wheel of Time books effectively run forever, so it was unclear when a stop point might be. Allegedly the third season was supposed to be designed as a sort of ending if this did happen, but having watched the final, I don’t get that impression at all.

In a now poorly aged article, I wrote that there shouldn’t be much to worry about in terms of the series getting a fourth season. Part of that was based on the confidence of the cast and showrunner. Here’s Josha Stradowski (Rand al’Thor) last month: