Six episodes. Just six. And when I finally realized that the 12th Quarter really was the end of Chad Powers Season 2, my first reaction was very simple: wait, what?

Because the show did not exactly finish a story. It almost did the opposite. It placed Russ Holliday at the center of an even more complicated web than the one he was already caught in when he invented Chad Powers, and left practically every major problem hanging for a possible third season.

It has not yet been officially renewed by Hulu, although Glen Powell and Michael Waldron have already revealed that they envisioned Chad Powers as a three-season story. Which helps explain why this finale feels far more like halftime than an ending.

And there are at least four questions that now need answers.

Will Tricia save Chad Powers or control him?

This may be the most interesting shift left by the finale. At the beginning of Chad Powers, Russ owned his own lie. He created the mask, invented a personality, and found in it a way back into football after destroying his own career.

Not anymore.

Danny handed the secret over to Tricia Yeager precisely to stop Gerry from destroying Chad. And it worked. With money, influence, and resources, Tricia can apparently protect Russ, hide his identity, and allow Chad to keep playing. But protection never comes for free in Tricia’s world.

She has already made it clear that she intends to keep Russ and Danny under her watch and keep Chad functioning for as long as he remains useful to the Catfish. Suddenly, the persona Russ created to regain his freedom may become a prison managed by somebody else.

It is a perfect irony for a series increasingly interested in identity: Russ invented Chad so he could go back to being himself. Now he may have to remain Chad because other people depend on that mask.

Ricky and Russ finally kissed. And her father saw them

After two seasons building toward an attraction that felt practically inevitable, Ricky Hudson and Russ finally crossed the line. And, naturally, Chad Powers chose the worst possible moment to let them do it.

Ricky was removing parts of Chad’s prosthetics when Jake Hudson walked into the locker room and found them together. The series deliberately did not show exactly how much he saw or understood. Steve Zahn has even said that the scene was intentionally left ambiguous.

The kiss, then, can create two completely different problems. The first is obvious: his daughter, a member of the coaching staff, is involved with the team’s quarterback. The second is much bigger: Jake may finally discover that Chad Powers never existed.

And this happens just as he announces that he plans to step down from the Catfish. In other words, the man who built that team may discover that a fundamental part of its success was based on a lie and that his own daughter helped keep it alive.

And what about Syracuse? Is Ricky really leaving?

This is where I hope the series is careful, because reducing this decision to “Ricky chooses Chad or Ricky chooses Jay” would be far less interesting than everything it has built so far.

Jay Palmer, played by Colin Woodell, is handsome, wealthy, charming, and clearly interested in her. He was also the person who helped create the connection that led Syracuse to approach Ricky about a place on its coaching staff.

But Jay is almost secondary compared to what Syracuse represents. Ricky has spent much of her professional life orbiting her father, the program he built and, more recently, the enormous mess called Chad Powers. Syracuse is the possibility of finding out who she is as a coach without any of those three things.

Which makes her dilemma much better than a simple love triangle. She can love Russ and still leave. In fact, perhaps she needs to leave precisely so the character does not end up defined only by the man she has fallen for. And there is something deliciously cruel about it: just when Russ finally manages to admit that he needs her, Ricky is given the chance to discover that perhaps she does not need him.

And Gerry?

This is the part I consider least resolved.

Gerry discovered the truth, turned his obsession into blackmail, and even tried to force Chad into manipulating a game so he could win a bet. Tricia managed to neutralize him in that moment, but that does not mean she eliminated the problem.

Because Gerry still knows that Chad Powers is Russ Holliday. And unlike Ricky, Danny, or Tricia, he has absolutely no reason to protect the secret. More than that, something that began as sports resentment has turned into an increasingly disorganized obsession. Gerry no longer simply wanted his position back. He wanted to destroy Chad.

That is precisely why his fate matters. If he returns, he cannot simply come back as the jealous quarterback from the first season. That version of him is already gone. The Gerry who ends Season 2 is much closer to an antagonist capable of blowing up Russ’s entire construction because he has begun organizing his own existence around that lie.

The mask is becoming too small

And perhaps this is the real question for a possible third season. In Season 1, Russ had to stop people from discovering who Chad was. In Season 2, Ricky found out. Then Gerry. Then Tricia. Now perhaps Jake. In other words, fewer and fewer people still believe that Chad Powers actually exists. And that creates a possibility far more interesting than simply waiting for the moment when the mask finally falls.

Perhaps Season 3 will be about what happens when the mask can no longer hide Russ — but Russ still does not know how to live without it. Because after two seasons, the most important question in Chad Powers is no longer, “When are they going to discover who he is?”

It is another one.

When everybody finally knows that Chad Powers is Russ Holliday, will Russ Holliday still want to go back to being Russ Holliday?