Season 30 of The Voice kicked off its inaugural Cut Week on Monday, November 2, a new round that replaces the traditional Knockouts and Playoffs as the only stage between the Battles and the Live Shows.

According to Decider, each coach selects two singers to go straight through to the Live Shows, while the remaining five battle for one final spot on the team. The end result is a Top 12 that will carry into the live portion of the season.

It marks, as multiple outlets describe it, the biggest single elimination in the show's history.

The surprise is structural: a show celebrating its 30th season is discarding a round fans have known for years and replacing it with a mass cull that sends most of each team home at once.

Levine, who has sat in the red chairs since the American version began, told Billboard he remembers doubting the format at the very start — "What are these big red goofy chairs and what are we supposed to do?" — and he now admits the new curveball is anything but easy.

"It's never fun to have to let people go, especially in such massive numbers like that," he told Billboard, framing Cut Week as the harshest cut the competition has ever staged.

Cut Week also hands viewers unprecedented power. Once the Top 12 is set, fans can vote via text and TikTok to send one final artist to the Live Shows, bringing the total to 13.

Yahoo reports that voting opens at 10:55 p.m. ET and closes at 3 a.m.

ET on Tuesday, November 3, and that voters must be 18 or older, in the U.S., and — for TikTok — hold a public account. Text voters send the artist's keyword to short code 22854, while TikTok users comment the keyword on The Voice's official vote-request post.

One vote per artist is allowed, with each vote requiring a separate text or comment.

Decider reports that the Cut Week episode aired at a special start time, moving to a new Monday slot of 9:00-11:00 p.m. ET on NBC to make way for returning comedies St. Denis Medical and The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins in the 8 p.m. hour.

Cord-cutters can watch through live TV services such as YouTube TV, Hulu + Live TV, fuboTV, Sling TV, or DIRECTV, and this season marks the first-ever Peacock simulcast, with next-day streaming also available on the platform.

The show then shifts to weekly Live Shows beginning Monday, November 9, running through the live finale on Monday, December 14, when a Season 30 winner will be crowned.

Levine told Billboard the chemistry among this season's four coaches is "insane," and joked that Riley Green reminds him of "a younger, funnier, better-looking Blake" Shelton — an inevitable comparison for the Maroon 5 frontman's longtime sparring partner.

He says the coaches are fiercely competitive but respectful, and that his coaching philosophy has matured: talent, in his view, has no genre, and "good is good." Beyond the show, he offered a deliberately vague update that the process of making new music has begun.

For the artists, his advice is stark: "Tomorrow could be anyone's last day," a sentiment that captures exactly what Cut Week is designed to test.