Come now, gentlemen. What's to explain? Speaking for infidels, generally, it's been publicly known for awhile that, despite some principle sets having built and more than one cast member clearly in the bag, the 31 show wasn't ready . . . it was announced for a premiere after STD3 on February 2. And the Picard show's nowhere near ready.
Did y'all think the argument from any realistic folks was that the flagship show of CBS All Access was going away with no replacement? That CBSAA was cutting the lights off and locking the login screens? I mean, I guess they could've tried to bank on tiding everyone over on The Twilight Zone reboot premiering in April, but I'm not aware of anyone making that argument, and that'd be a rather large risk since the amount of buzz about the show seems low. That's a brand name with a good history, but not the dedication of Trek.
Just so everyone's clear, the basic argument from me and that's basically the same elsewhere (albeit with a lot more flourish and exaggeration, at times, from some folks) is that STD is a disappointment, hence the replacements on offer like the Yeoh show (taking away a main/significant STD character), the Picard show (treating STD like it's the girlfriend in the wandering eye boyfriend meme), and so on. If you're not clear on what that means, imagine how hurt DS9 seasons 3-7 would've been if Garak had been played by their most well-known star and they'd done a Garak spinoff and restarted TNG at the same time a year or two after TNG went off the air. DSN5 would've been the last season of the show, probably . . . and even if not, it'd have been nutty to think otherwise.
The production staff was also making some hints about the end of Season 2 being when everything would suddenly line up (for a change) with canon, which rather sounded like wrapping things up. So, the thesis that S2 was the last was plausible in November. But, however late the S3 announcement (most comparable things had been announced already), the decision to extend STD one more season seemed to exist before early February when they were doing a full-court advertising press and the aforementioned explanation of premiere dates for the other shows came out.
Or, put another way, STD1 was the great experiment, paid for by Netflix. STD2 (after the Short Trek webisode things went nowhere) was somewhat troubled, with CBS footing the bill more (and kicking out the overspenders, leaving Kurtzman to handle it personally). STD3 is floating things, with Kurtzman installing a new, largely untested showrunner until the replacements come online.
Now, if they keep it going alongside the other two, I'd be a bit surprised. However, it isn't like we know the intricate business details (despite folks like Midnight's Edge and Doomcock suggesting they have intel). For comparison, note that the CBS network kept Elementary going another season and a half after spending its fifth season as the network's lowest rated show.
https://www.cheatsheet.com/entertainmen ... 2016.html/
https://deadline.com/2018/12/elementary ... 202521292/
The business reasons why are in the paragraph about "lucrative off-network and international deals" related to the iconic character. The CBSAA stuff is a similar rationale.
One thing a lot of folks don't seem to realize about ratings and network/streaming business these days is that things don't work like they used to. What would've been obvious insta-death back in the day isn't always so, now. Or, as Culber explained, "I had lucrative off-network deals." ;-)