Those tuning into Amazon’s reboot of The Tick this weekend were hit with two surprises. For one, the series itself proved much more layered than expected, and second; the season was only half-streamed. Now, showrunners explain why the second half of The Tick Season 1 will premiere in 2018.

You’re warned of light spoilers for The Tick from here on out, but where Amazon debuted the first six episodes of the superhero spoof this past weekend, the second half of Season 1 will wait until “early 2018,” according to the company. One might assume the second half was delayed over production concerns (as we saw with Netflix’s The Get Down), but series creator Ben Edlund tells CinemaBlend they deliberately chose to stretch out the airing strategy:

The Binge Watching issue is… I see it as it’s a perfect dive from a high board, and there’s no splash. It just goes in and goes out when you experience it as a culture, it comes and goes. [Ben, David, and Barry] We’re all sort of veterans of the opposite of that. Fan energy wants to have a culture to express itself in. So if you split a season, and give a gap in-between, you get anticipation, you get people are able [to] talk about what happened, are able to kind of set their watches for what happens next. It helps us win back some of what is lost when we lose, inevitably, the week to week sort of broadcast basis of storytelling.

This is the first time Amazon has deliberately elected to split a season in half, but the idea might become more prevalent strategy overall. Netflix has often struggled to keep certain series in conversation between yearly premieres, while other shows like Voltron: Legendary Defender similarly opt for shorter seasons twice a year.

The Tick itself reaches a natural midpoint with the sixth episode finale, but will the series keep that same momentum with another six in 2018, and a potential second season after that? You can watch the trailer below, and stream the first six on Amazon prime.

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