What the… blazes?

Fox is cutting short Lucifer‘s sophomore run, saving the final four of the 22 produced episodes for Season 3, TVLine has confirmed.

The scheduling switch-up, which trims Season 2’s tally to 18 episodes and places the finale on Monday, May 29, was first noted by Futon Critic.

Now lest anyone cry “But… closure!,” TVLine did report back in December that those four episodes will be standalone in nature, and not critical parts of any serialized narrative.

“We have four episodes at the very end that … are going to be completely standalone episodes,” co-showrunner Ildy Modrovich told me in the course of answering an Inside Line reader question. One of them, she said, is “a flashback to Lucifer first arriving [in Los Angeles].”

TVLine has since learned that the four, more character-focused episodes are not “100-percent standalone” but do pick up some current story points while teeing up new ones.

“[W]e designed this season to be an 18-episode arc because we originally were going to be 18 episodes. But then we got four more! Surprise!” co-showrunner Joe Henderson explained on Twitter on Thursday. “So we decided to create four episodes that let us play around a bit. Dig deeper into the character stories, play with format a bit, etc. We didn’t know whether they’d air this season or next until now. Now we do. So bad news is you need to wait for them. And I know that sucks.” (Henderson answers your burning questions about the scheduling here; please read before wondering aloud in Comments.)

Currently on a midseason break, Lucifer resumes its run on Monday, May 1, with Episode 14.

Want scoop on Lucifer, or for any other show? Email InsideLine@tvline.com and your question may be answered via Matt’s Inside Line.