At the Chuck vs. The Final Press Day a few months ago, I had the chance to speak to each member of the cast on location, as well as with Executive Producer Chris Fedak. It was the second to last day of filming and the cast and crew were fatigued, running 2-3 units in a week to film the two-hour finale to air this January 27^th. Their filming days were starting at dusk, and stopping at dawn, and they were coming back to do it all over again the next day.

Zachary Levi talked a little bit about the TV business being more of an assembly line

“You're a factory and everyone is a part of doing that”.

Yvonne Strahovski point blank talks about how worn out everyone is.

“I won’t lie, the hours are very difficult on a show like this. I think we’re all a bit worn out.”

Despite the fatigue, the running theme of the day was High Emotion. Everyone seemed incredibly sad that their five-year, fan rallied run was coming to an end. The cast has genuine affection for each other, and the praise each of them has for the others could have filled my recorder’s space.

Fedak:  “Everybody is losing their business every day. It's really our biggest struggle trying to keep each other together for once…Yvonne has been the weak link this time. We're on set, shooting what is the final scene of the series and she was crying and she turns to me and she says, "say something funny." I had to tell her, "Josh handles the funny, I handle the action."

Yvonne: “I've just been crying. I'm going to cry now. It's horrible. I cried yesterday, I did my last fight scene ever.”

Adam Baldwin: “Oh she's going on to bigger and better things, she's got nothing to cry about. She's got all our phone numbers and emails, she'll see us around. Once in a while.”

Yvonne: “Once in awhile.”

Adam: “That's the funny thing about Hollywood, Yvonne walked off a plane into a new family here and a new working atmosphere. And now she's got her feet dug in Los Angeles and she's established, she's going to be around for a long time. So it's really great to see nice people succeed.”

After hearing such praise and affection between everyone, it became apparent to me that the chemistry that I’ve been seeing on-screen, one of the reasons I’ve tuned into each episode of Chuck, is rooted in that sense of family off-screen. It isn’t manufactured, it’s right there, and it’s one of the best thing this show has going for it. It’s also one of the things that the finale will tap into.

ECHOES OF THE PAST

After seeing Chuck vs. The Bullet Train, there is a sense of impending doom in hard-core fans who tweet their emotion. The cast and Fedak don’t pull back when they talk about what’s about to happen. There is a return of the Will They/Won’t They dynamic, that a lot of fans hate. Yvonne admits: “I think [this storyline] is going to weigh heavy on people's hearts…There's a definite element of sadness and stuff that we have to go through to get to the final moment.”

But the rough journey is directly proportionate to how sweet the payoff will be. Fedak says that this ending has been a year in the making. They’ve known how they wanted the series ending to be (and I get a little teary typing that) since the end of the last season.

Zachary: “The finale is really like…what happens in those last few episodes kind of resets the clock in a lot of ways. And you find our heroes almost like you found them in the beginning of the show”

Fedak: “It's very callbacky. It's very much an episode haunted by previous seasons. You're going to find a lot of echoes. The first half of the night, episode 12, is very much a contained thriller. Then episode 13, every act will have echoes of past seasons and it will make…you'll see how we'll fold into the story and the narrative will make a lot of sense.  But there is something about it…as we were working on the episode, breaking it in the writers' room, we wanted something that was a play through the entire show, not just this season.”

These “echoes” that Fedak references was evident on set that day. There are echoes that go all the way back to the Pilot, and I had a grin on my face when I saw it. Chuck isn’t particularly good at over-arching season-long arcs. This has been proven season after season of villains falling flat. But when they focus on the things they’re good at, such the emotional beats of each moment, or focus on the core group working together towards a goal, they’re very, very good.

There is a certain catch to the last statement, and that is the fact that Sarah seems to be the Big Bad this time around, to borrow a beloved Buffy catch-phrase. Fans seem to worry about whether that will last into the final moments. In Fedak’s own words, this finale is a “love letter to the fans”, and they know exactly how the fans want the show to end: with everyone riding off into the sunset, preferably arm in arm. It will be a final good-bye, a bitter-sweet moment, and everyone gets to have their stories wrapped up tidily.

Zachary: “Obviously Chuck and Morgan are going to be best friends for the rest of their lives, Chuck and Ellie are still brother and sister and therefore Awesome is still my brother in law, and Casey would-we would all still continue to see each other in some way shape or form. But the world that's been created, the world we live and worked in is drastically changed and drastically different and so, you know. But we do say goodbyes, at least for the time being. It's gnarly, it's really, really surreal. [But] I don't feel like we were cut short as difficult as it is to have to kind of close the last chapter on this journey.”

STAY CALM AND WATCH ON, AKA DON'T FREAK OUT

The question was posed to Fedak on whether the fans would need group therapy after the finale, but I thought Zac’s reply answered it better:

“I can only assume and hope that the fans as they're watching these episodes, the finale, the two hour special are going to feel the same way. But it's good, it's cathartic, it's therapeutic. It's not necessarily tears of joy but it's tears of love. And I hope that the fans all feel that”

It seems like they expect the fans (including me!) to do a lot of crying, but it’s not without the fun. The callback part to the Pilot alone is worth tuning in for. And Jeffster, for the numerous fans who adore them, including Fedak who said that given the choice would give them a spinoff, does give one final performance. Let’s just say if you like the Norwegian pop band A-ha. You will like their choice of song.

At the end of the day I had a really good feeling about the finale that nothing the past episodes have introduced could shake. Not all finales are created equal, but season after season, Chuck finales –and even fake-out finales – have usually been spot on when it comes to tapping into the emotional core of the show. The spy stuff is all trappings. It’s the empty tub after a really good movie. The kernel of Chuck is in Team Bartowski, and the butter is all the added goodness to it: the family aspect in terms of the Awesomes and Alex, how Team B and that family aspect relate to each other, and the little moments in between.

So one last time I say to Chuck fans: “Don’t Freak Out.”

And to Chuck? I don’t say good-bye, I say: “Save You Later.”