Warning: Spoilers ahead for Daisy Jones and the Six
In Taylor Jenkins Reid‘s novel, Daisy Jones and the Six, the reasoning behind the musical group’s name, The Six, is fairly self-explanatory: there are six members in the band. This logic, however, does not apply to the television adaption of the same name, which drops on Amazon Prime on March 3. In the series, the Six is made up of five band members—a pretty significant change that zealous fans of the book were quick to note on social media after a new trailer for the show dropped last month.
In the book, the band, which originally goes by the Dunne Brothers, changes their name to the Six to better reflect the band’s makeup. The group, though led by frontman Billy Dunne, and his brother, Graham, also includes the keyboardist Karen, drummer Warren, bassist Pete, and his brother, Eddie, who becomes the lead guitarist after the band’s first one, Chuck, dies at war. In the series, the band decides to change their name to the Six at the suggestion of Karen, who implies that the person who helps them make the band six is Camila, Billy’s ever-present girlfriend and later wife, who joins them on tour.
Read more: A Guide to All The Taylor Jenkins Reid Film and TV Adaptations
Conversely, in the series, the character of Chuck doesn’t die in war, but instead decides to forgo pursuing music to attend college—and the character of Pete is eliminated entirely. Showrunner and writer Scott Neustadter says writing Pete out of the series was a difficult but necessary necessary decision that allowed him to give the many characters in the show the depth they deserved; for example, the storylines of disco singer Simone Jackson and producer Teddy Price are expanded considerably in the series, as opposed to their plots in the book. “When you adapt things for television, changes inevitably happen,” Neustadter tells TIME. “But this one didn’t stress us out too much. The Pete character serves a function in the novel, but he doesn’t have much to say, he’s not the most dramatic. We knew if we were going to cast Pete, the actor might want more to do. It felt like eliminating Pete enabled us to do more with the characters that we had in the ensemble, which was already a pretty big group of people. And I hope everyone, especially the Pete stans, forgive us after they watch the show.”
Read more: Taylor Jenkins Reid Has Become a Bestseller Machine. She’s Wondering at What Cost
Fellow showrunner Will Graham adds that it was important to the team that all of the supporting characters also get nuanced and full storylines.
“It was really important with stepping into the incredible world that Taylor created to bring life to the stories of the supporting characters and make sure that they all had full stories,” Graham says. “We got to fully enjoy the romance of Karen and Graham, we got to go on Simone’s journey with her. And because of that, we just needed to make sure that we had the right amount of stories to fit in the show. So R.I.P. Pete, but I do think there’s a little bit of him embodied in some of our other characters.”
As for Camila being the unseen sixth member of The Six, Neustadter says that it’s fitting and demonstrates just how interconnected everyone’s lives are.
“It’s an accurate assessment that she is really a part of them,” he says. “They are a family.”
