Mad Men creator Matt Weiner is known for keeping secrets about the show close to the vest, but in a new cover story for Variety he lays season 7’s two halves out in the open.

As most fans already know, the final fourteen Mad Men episodes will be split into two halves airing in Spring 2014 and Spring 2015 respectively. The front seven episodes will be very different thematically from the back seven, Weiner explains.

“The first seven are about the material world — ambition and the things we can control,” he says. “Don has had almost everything taken away from him: his position, his status, his confidence [after being fired from his own ad agency]. Watching was hard for a lot of people. We’ve seen him go from a hungry and insecure person to someone who’s got growing children, a second marriage, and he’s on this third company.”

As for the final seven episodes, that’s where we’ll turn to things like religion and maybe some hopes for lifelong romances. “We’re dealing with the immaterial. What happens to these people when [their] material needs are met. What else is on their mind? Love? God? I don’t want people to be afraid, and think it’s going to be a big dream sequence. But it is looking at the outside and the inside of these people.”

Judging by this explanation, it sounds like the episodes in 2014 will deliver the various cast members some of the peace they’ve long been hoping for, and the 2015 episodes will look at if these things they finally have acquired will actually fulfill their lives.

You can read more from Weiner over on Variety.

What are you expecting out of the final ‘Mad Men’ episodes?

Mad Men season 7 premieres next Sunday, April 13 at 10 p.m. eastern/pacific on AMC.