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Over the last few years, Netflix has seemed pretty unstoppable. With hit original series like House of Cards, Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, Narcos, and more, the streaming giant has made their mark on the industry in a way that can only be described as revolutionary – who could have guessed that the DVD delivery service would cement itself in the zeitgeist so firmly? Their Hollywood takeover has been truly unprecedented; with their move into original films, festival hits, and a slew of popular television series revivals, they’ve appeared to be unstoppable. This week, the purchase of comics publishing firm Millarworld marked their first company acquisition ever, hinting at more original content opportunities for the service. All of this success can’t come without a cost, however, and recent reports that Netflix has acquired some $20.54 billion in long and short-term debt might hint at trouble in paradise.

It’s not that the service hasn’t been doing well; with over 104 million subscribers across the world and 91 Emmy Award nominations across 50 series this year, they’ve permanently changed the way we consume content and become a critical darling in the process. Their growth – which has seen them quadruple subscribers over the last 5 years – has created the illusion that they’re near-indestructible, but their financial obligations might just get in the way. Just this year, Netflix expects to spend at least $6 billion on their original content, a number seemingly justified by the fact that their stock is up some 50% this year – and they don’t plan to slow down this spending anytime soon.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the company has shelled out an unprecedented amount of cash to produce new shows in an effort to capture more subscribers and keep up with the rapidly expanding catalogues of rivals like Hulu, Amazon, and HBO (the premium cable service that bested them in number of Emmy nods this year). The goal is to reach a point where 50% of their streaming slate is original content so that they possess ownership of more of the content on their platform, an effort intended to generate more revenue over time as they continue to grow.

$20.54 billion, yes, billion, is not a small number. If anything, it sounds terrifying, like something of a death kiss for Netflix – so why isn’t anyone freaking out about it? It’s easy to get bogged down (and bored to death) by financial jargon and endless statistics, so here’s what’s really going on.

Is Netflix really $20.54 billion in debt?

Sort of. After the Los Angeles Times story calculated this number, Netflix responded in a statement to clarify the figures:

The L.A. Times story inaccurately calculates our debt, counting our streaming obligations (i.e. our content contracts with studios) of $15.7b as debt, which it isn’t. The correct number: we have total gross debt of $4.8b vs. our equity market value of about $75b. They have since corrected the story.

More context, the $15.7b is future content expenses that roll through the income statement over time. Every broadcaster, cable network and streamer that has licensing agreements uses the same structure. As a point of reference, Disney/ESPN has $49b in similar commitments for sports contracts.

So there you have it. Netflix is really about $4.8 billion in gross debt, and the money owed to studios via contracts – $15.7 billion – is technically separate. When you put that $4.8 billion next to their equity market value, a hefty $75 billion, that debt doesn’t seem so big, but at the rate they’re spending, the numbers may soon tell a different story.

Why doesn’t Netflix care about being in debt?

After seeing a 25% increase in subscribers in just the last year, the platform doesn’t feel like there’s much to worry about. Netflix fully expects “to be free-cash-flow negative for many years”, and their investors seem to feel the same way – they presume that all this spending will “create growth” in a short amount of time. As they tell it, we’re in an age of “Peak TV”, and the money has to be poured in to maintain momentum. Their plan to split the library 50% original content and 50% preexisting titles may help curb the numerous licensing fees they’re currently paying and generate more long-term revenue.

Why are these series so expensive to produce if they’re Netflix originals?

Well, a handful of Netflix’s best-performing original shows are actually licensed from other companies, which can incur some pretty significant fees. Orange is the New Black is produced by Lionsgate, House of Cards by Media Rights Capital, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt by Universal Television, and The Crown and Bloodline are Sony Pictures Television productions. Netflix may be able to put their “original” stamp on a slew of high-profile titles, but it doesn’t come without a cost.

When should Netflix start worrying?

Industry experts are not as optimistic as the platform bigwigs, and warn of a “Netflix bubble” that could easily burst if the service – and all their costly original content – fails to continue drawing new subscribers. They’ve already began to start cutting their (presumably) underperforming, expensive series with titles like The Get Down, Bloodline, and Sense8, a move that Netflix CEO Reed Hastings attributed to their “hit ratio” being “way too high right now”. To their credit, they’ve begun to tackle the issue of expensive shows with small audiences – but even this strategy doesn’t seem to be making all that much of a difference.

Wait – what’s the “Netflix bubble”?

“Bubble” is actually an economic term that refers to when there is a rapid run-up in the cost of a commodity that is not justified by the intrinsic value of said commodity, or when the commodity’s prices do not reflect realistic expectations for the future. In layman’s terms? The “Netflix bubble” was created when the platform began shelling out these billions of dollars for content with an unrealistic expectation of subscriber growth. Bubbles tend to end badly, and with the likelihood that Netflix’s growth will eventually saturate, things don’t look great for them. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t seem like the surge of programming is sustainable.

What will happen to Netflix now that Disney’s leaving?

This week, it was announced that Disney would be pulling their titles off Netflix and ending their deal to start their own streaming service in 2019. The absence of all of Disney’s family-friendly programming will certainly leave a noticeable void on the platform, and questions about the future of Marvel and Star Wars properties remaining on Netflix are still up in the air. Either way, Netflix seems to lose – they’ll either bid farewell to the titles, or be forced to pay more licensing fees. It is worth noting that Marvel Television/Netflix shows like Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Daredevil, etc., will stay, as they are part of a separate entity.

This might all sound like a lot of doom and gloom, but Netflix does have some time to get a game plan; the original deal in place struck back in 2012 will continue through 2018, meaning that the Disney theatrical releases (including Spider-Man: Homecoming, the new Thor and Avengers flicks, and even the new Star Wars movies, among a slew of others) will still arrive and be available to stream on the platform for the duration of the deal. With an enduring brand and hundreds of titles behind them, it’s likely that Disney will dominate the children’s programming arena, and unless Netflix comes up with some giant plan of attack, their hold on children, perhaps the most eager binge-watchers in the world, will come to an end.

So is Netflix’s debt even that big of a deal?

Nope! Every company has debt. Apple boasts some $100 billion in debt, Disney around $50 billion, and Amazon about $8 billion. The important thing here is generally their debt-to-equity ratio, and these big players do pretty well. At the end of the day, it’s just juicy to watch a massive corporation stumble a little, and that seems to be what happened when the Los Angeles Times dropped their story. The burst of the Netflix bubble may be ahead, but it doesn’t seem to be happening anytime soon.