Though The Office has officially left Netflix, that hasn’t put a stop to its extreme popularity. Spanning nine seasons and 201 episodes, the show continues to captivate audiences years after it finished airing. Because The Office is so popular, fans are always analyzing the show, finding plotholes, and posing new questions. One question that fans always seem to have is about Dwight and Angela’s son, Philip Schrute.

Though Jim and Pam are undoubtedly the most popular couple of The Office, many fans love Dwight and Angela’s love story as well. However, fans often have questions about the couple’s son, Philip. Fans will recall that in the “Free Family Portrait Studio” episode, Dwight, believing that he is the true father of Angela’s son, steals a diaper out of the trash and gets it DNA tested. Angela, however, insists that Philip is the son of her then-husband, Robert Lipton, and the DNA test reveals that Dwight is not the father of Philip.

Why Dwight’s paternity test for his son, Philip, came back negative

Of course, in the penultimate episode of The Office, “A.A.R.M.”, Dwight and fans both learn that Philip is actually Dwight’s biological son. But how can the negative paternity test be explained? In a 2013 interview with Office Tally, David Rogers (who directed and edited the penultimate episode) revealed why Dwight’s paternity test proved to be negative. According to Rogers, Dwight never actually grabbed a diaper that belonged to Phillip.

“In ‘Free Family Portrait Studio’, Dwight pulled a diaper out of the bathroom and had the lab run a DNA test from that,” Rogers began. “But between Jim and Pam’s kids, and other babies and children from the building complex being there, it’s safe to say that there were other diapers in the trash and Dwight grabbed the wrong one. If Angela didn’t think the baby was or at least could possibly be Dwight’s, she never would have went off and chased after him and the diaper in the first place. And when the doctor tells them that the baby isn’t his, she does have a look of surprise.”

‘The Office’ writers wrote dialogue for the cast to address the mixup

Rogers continued on to share that The Office writers did write dialogue to address why Dwight’s paternity came back negative. However, they opted to scrap it in case there were fans tuning into the show who didn’t watch the “Free Family Portrait Studio” episode and had no clue what the characters were referring too.

“We even had a line when Dwight brings Angela into his office to tell her that he thinks Phillip is a Schrute — he says, ‘It’s about Phillip. How do I put this… I still think there was some mix-up, or you gave the lab the wrong diaper, or lots of people can have the same DNA…’ And Angela also added a little something in the proposal scene, about Dwight maybe grabbing the wrong diaper after she told Dwight that Phillip was his son,” Rogers shared.

While we would have loved to see Rainn Wilson (who played Dwight) deliver the line about people having the same DNA, we can see why it was pulled. But at least fans of The Office no longer have the mystery of the the diaper DNA hanging over their heads.