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This post isn't about what's going to be in The Power of Two. It's not even going to be about who's going to be in it; that we already know. Two's going to be hosting and 41 contestants are going to be participating, including one recommended character.[1] This page is about my answers to two uncommonly-asked questions about the future of TPOT and the rest of BFB. It's strange to talk about the future of a series that hasn't aired yet, but I figured it would be a cool thought experiment.

Also, it's a chance to try out the new Visual Editor on Wikia. Apparently they let you insert equations now.

15 January 2021 update: This page is heavily outdated! There will be a bit more of a delay between TPOT episodes, and two characters (not one) debuted after TPOT 1. A new post has been made about the show, and it can be found here.

Question 1: How long will TPOT be?[]

Fact: The average net change during the course of a non-pilot, non-finale episode is .[2] The standard deviation of those values is .

Fact: The first episode of TPOT[3] will begin with 40 contestants and will end with 41 contestants.

Fact: In many object shows, the final episode should have 3 remaining contestants. There are exceptions, such as Inanimate Insanity.

Conclusion: If TPOT follows the format of one elimination per episode, then there would be 39 episodes, plus a finale and two finale episodes of BFB.[4]

But this format seems very unlikely, as past data shows us that 75.4% of episodes end with one less competitor than at the start, 17.5% end with no change to the number of competitors and 7.0% end with one more competitor. Thus, the number of episodes, when taking that information and the true average net change, into account, turns to a number between 56 and 57 pafatfeobfb.

The true standard deviation of the data, since we are expecting (an average of) 56.5 episodes pafatfeobfb, would be calculated by dividing the original standard deviation by the square root of 56.5 in this equation: .[5] From this we get .

This is what happens at the fiftieth percentile, or zero standard deviations.

What if TPOT didn't follow the expected number of episodes?[]

What if the creators changed the mean net change for whatever reason? What if double eliminations become a thing, or if three recommended characters join the show in one episode?

Note on standard deviations
When... the mean net change is... which means... i.e...
the standard deviation is lower, farther from zero, more contestants eliminated per episode, the series is shorter.
the standard deviation is higher, closer to zero, more rejoinings or debuts in the series, the series is longer.

The table below shows the average number of episodes of TPOT, both pafatfeobfb and in total.

Average number of TPOT (and BFB) episodes made after 2021
Number of standard deviations away from the average Mean net change per episode Number of TPOT episodes made until the final three Number of TPOT and BFB episodes made
–3 –0.924 42 to 43 45 to 46
–2 –0.844 46 to 47 49 to 50
–1 –0.764 50 to 51 53 to 54
0 (average) –0.684 56 to 57 59 to 60
+1 –0.604 63 to 64 66 to 67
+2 –0.524 73 to 74 76 to 77
+3 –0.444 86 to 87 89 to 90

But that's just if things don't go as expected. The values that will continue to be used for the rest of this post is as follows… TPOT will end after 56 to 57 episodes, and BFB will end after 59 to 60 episodes (of TPOT).

I think that solves the answer to the first question, but what about...


Question 2: When will TPOT and BFB end?[]

This question has been going around for a very long time... I'd alluded to it before in "Before BFB" back in 2018, but no one seems to have an answer to this question because of the crazy unpredictability of the schedules of the BFB people. I think I've got an answer, though.

Issue: The problem with finding the most realistic date is that the length of hiatuses between the episodes varies greatly and depends on, as Michael mentioned in a video of his, "college, pet cat, health, care, merch, acct., taxes [and] rent".

Fact: If you take the average number of days between each episode of the BFDI, er, franchise (all the way from 2010),[6] then the mean is days with a standard deviation of days.

Lengths of inter-episode hiatuses by BFDI series
Series Average hiatus length

(days)

Standard deviation

(days)

BFDI (2010–2012) 30.4 0.9[7]
BFDIA (2012–2013) 49.9 23.8
BFB (2017–present, average) 43.1 68.6
Early episodes (2017–2018) 22.6 8.7
Middle episodes (2019–2020) 85.7 36.5
Later episodes (2020–present) 24.3 5.2

Best-case scenario: No hiatuses[]

One thing to notice is that the middle episodes of BFB, episodes 13 to 16, were released during what is considered BFB's hiatus (not cancelled) period. I believe those values should not be counted, so for non-hiatal BFB episodes, with which we are predicting the future release dates, the average hiatus length is days and the standard deviation days. This can only happen if there are no hiatuses in the future, something that will be discussed below.

With the assumption that every episode is created and released at the same time, regardless of its status as being an episode that is debut-only, elimination-only, etc.:

Predictions for release dates of selected TPOT episodes, best-case scenario
Episode number Release date[8]
TPOT 2 1 February 2021
TPOT 3 25 February 2021
TPOT 45 (SD: –3) November 2023
TPOT 49 (SD: –2) February 2024
TPOT 53 (SD: –1) May 2024
TPOT 67 (SD: +1) April 2025
TPOT 77 (SD: +2) November 2025
TPOT 90 (SD: +3) October 2026

In the best-case scenario, TPOT will most likely finish after 57 or 58 episodes, which will be released from August to September 2024. BFB will finish one to three episodes after that, during October 2024.

Worst-case scenario: Hiatuses as in the past[]

Things don't always turn out the way they should, though. Sometimes, longer breaks happen. It's natural! One early example happened in 2012, when BFDIA 4 was delayed because Michael was sick. Another example happened between July 2018 and July 2019—a whole year without a BFB episode!

I don't expect hiatuses to happen as often these days, as there are now much more people on the BFB team. Just look at the credits for proof. But that doesn't mean we can't imagine the "worst".[9]

Fact: A hiatus precedes 11.9% of non-pilot episodes, i.e. 7 out of 9. In the context of BFDI (during which 0 hiatuses happened) and BFDIA (3 hiatuses), a hiatus occurs when an episode is not released at the same time as indicated on the screen near the end of an episode. In the context of BFB (4 hiatuses), a hiatus is an inter-episode break that is longer than 60 days, or two months.[10] The average length of these hiatuses was days and the standard deviation days.

But how frequent will these hiatuses occur in TPOT and the end of BFB?

Remember that the probability of a hiatus at any point during the run of a series is 11.9%. The average length of an inter-episode hiatus can be changed to account for this figure. 88.1%[11] of the new total will have 23.5 from the non-hiatus average, while 11.9% of it will have 117.9. The weighted sum obtained from this is days, i.e. if the hiatuses come in the same intervals as before.

Predictions for release dates of selected TPOT episodes, worst-case scenario
Episode number Release date[8]
TPOT 2 12 February 2021
TPOT 3 13 March 2021
TPOT 45 (SD: –3) March 2025
TPOT 49 (SD: –2) August 2025
TPOT 53 (SD: –1) December 2025
TPOT 67 (SD: +1) April 2027
TPOT 77 (SD: +2) April 2028
TPOT 90 (SD: +3) June 2029

In the worst-case scenario, TPOT will most likely finish after 57 or 58 episodes, which will be released from May to June 2026. BFB will finish one to three episodes after that, from July to August 2026.

Realistic scenario: Half the hiatuses as before[]

But it's not good to have so little faith in the Jacknjellify crew; they really do their best to give the viewers cool and unexpected stuff, even if it's not episodes per se.

I decided to take half of the best-case scenarios and half of the worst-case scenarios to make as realistic a conjecture as possible of when TPOT and BFB should end. This acknowledges that things could come up in the future, while still being optimistic for the future of both of the series.

So, the average hiatus length becomes days, almost exactly one month![12] This means that...

Final predictions for release dates of selected TPOT episodes
Episode number Release date[8]
TPOT 2 7 February 2021
TPOT 3 8 March 2021
TPOT 45 (SD: –3) July 2024
TPOT 49 (SD: –2) November 2024
TPOT 53 (SD: –1) March 2025
TPOT 67 (SD: +1) April 2026
TPOT 77 (SD: +2) January 2027
TPOT 90 (SD: +3) February 2028

The most realistic prediction[13] is that TPOT will most likely finish after 57 or 58 episodes, which will be released from June to July 2025. BFB will finish one to three episodes after that, from August to September 2025.


Conclusion[]

TPOT and BFB will most likely end in the summer of 2025.


Notes[]

  1. It's Winner.
  2. This was calculated by going through each episode and determining the difference between the number of characters at the start and at the end of an episode. Thus, an elimination-only episode received a score of –1, an elimination-plus-debut episode (BFDI 19) received a score of 0 and a rejoin-only episode (BFDI 9) received a score of 1. The average of all scores was taken. This value was calculated from .
  3. Treated in the value above as a separate episode of the fourth season, i.e. BFB.
  4. Better abbreviated as "pafatfeobfb".
  5. I remember learning that you have to divide by the square root of the sample size—the number I got made more sense than one standard deviation away from the average being that someone gets eliminated every fifth episode.
  6. Not counting pilot episodes or anything related to BFDIA 6.
  7. This is to be expected; BFDI episodes were always released on the first of every month.
  8. 8.0 8.1 8.2 For future years, I don't want to be too specific with the days—that's what they call "overkill".
  9. It seems a bit selfish to call an object show hiatus the worst thing in the world. Creators have other things to do, truth be told. But there are some people out in the object show community who are more than impatient.
  10. One exception: BFB 14, which is a direct continuation of BFB 13—if it were styled like BFDIA, it would be known as BFB 13B.
  11. Standard deviation becomes irrelevant in this situation, just like with the last one, as we are only looking at averages here.
  12. Of course, in my opinion!
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