While Mr. Robot may be coming to an end, we’ll at least get a sizeable goodbye to the buzzy USA Network show. It was announced back in August that the upcoming Mr. Robot Season 4 would serve as the show’s swan song, bringing an end to creator/showrunner Sam Esmail’s story of hacking, mental illness, and of course capitalism gone awry. The series premiered in 2015 and, based on strong critical praise, slowly became a runaway hit, redefining what a USA Network drama could be. The show has continued to take big swings throughout its run, and it’ll be interesting to see how Esmail brings Elliot’s (Rami Malek) story to a close.

When it was announced that Mr. Robot Season 4 would be the show’s last, there still wasn’t confirmation as to how long the season would be. The first and third seasons of the show consisted of 10 episodes each, while Season 2—the first season where Esmail directed all the episodes—ran for 12 episodes. When Collider’s own Christina Radish recently caught up with Esmail to discuss his new Amazon Prime series Homecoming, the showrunner revealed why he decided Season 4 would be the show’s last and how long it will be:

“I always knew what the ending of the show was, so at the end of Season 3, when we went into the writers’ room for Season 4, I said, ‘Well, here’s the ending. Here’s where we left off. How many actual episodes do we have? Let’s not drag this out anymore than we need to. What is the number?’ And we discovered that the number was 12, so that’s when we settled on. So, we said, ‘We’re here at the end. Let’s wrap it up this next season.’”

Mr. Robot Season 4 won’t debut until sometime in 2019 as production has yet to begin, which means the show will have been off the air for more than a year when it returns—Esmail made Homecoming and Malek shot Bohemian Rhapsody during the hiatus. But here’s hoping the final episodes will have been worth the wait.

Look for our full interview with Esmail on Collider soon.