Chuck showrunner Chris Fedak got on the phone with a bunch of entertainment reporters today, giving us the opportunity to pick his brain about the final season of the show. He talks about everything from the Morgansect to Chuck’s journey to Sarah’s “jaw-dropping” featured episode and more.

WARNING: SPOILERS

Q: Will Chuck get the Intersect back?

CF: One of the great things about seasons 1 and 2 was seeing Chuck come up with his own “Chuck solutions” to problems. I’m not going to tell you if he gets it back or not and if we’re going to go into the Chuck fu world, but I think one of the unique changes for this season is that Chuck doesn’t have it and that the spy world is going to be getting a lot more difficult.

Q: I saw the first episode this season and it was great that you had Chuck use his computer skills, just to remind everyone that he’s still a computer geek. When you started to conceive this show, did you forecast how it was going to evolve or were you just going by the seat of your pants, hoping to be picked up for the next season? Or did you have a greater arc where Chuck would become the leader of his own spy organization?

CF: It was all planned, every step of the way. I knew exactly that I would be sitting behind my desk answering your question right now. There’s been no doubt whatsover. [chuckles] First, I totally agree with you in regard to the Chuck computer skills. As we had Chuck do more and more Chuck-fu and fun Intersect stuff, we kind of got away from the computer side of Chuck. Here in the first couple episodes of the season, we’re gonna have a lot of fun with going back to Chuck being the amzing computer guy. Zachary Levi directed an episode, episode 5 of the season, which is called Chuck vs. the Hack-Off. It’s probably one of the nerdier episodes we’ve ever done, but it’s got some amazing hacking sequences. We really took our lead from Swordfish. It’s a really, really fun episode and we kind of get back into who Chuck was. We actually learn that Chuck was known as the Piranha and that the movie Swordfish was based on him.

In regard to planning it all out, Josh [Schwartz] and I always had an idea, we had worlds we wanted to go into and we had shapes for the show that we were excited about. The idea of the private spy team was something that we imagined as far back as season 3, and how much fun that would be to go out into that world and have Chuck put together a Sneakers-like operation. But for the most part it’s a combination of one part the dreams we have and the second part the seat of your pants. When it comes to network television, you’re dealing with your situation week by week and season by season. When you get an order for 11 or 6 more, you have to figure it out as you go. It’s really a combination.

Q: Now that you’re wrapping up the series, are there any people or storylines you’re hoping to bring back in those final few hours?

CF: Right now we have episode 13 up on the board, and it’s kind of my panic attack that’s just waiting for me every day. The second half of the season drives us into the Chuck finale. It’s some big, emotional, epic things. We still have mysteries we’re going to learn about Sarah and Casey and Chuck, and that in that last episode we’re really looking to blow it out in a way we’ve never before. There are a number of stories that are currently in play, and if I had my druthers, I would try to do everything and I think that’s what I’m gonna try to do. So to answer your question, yes, there are a number of characters and storylines that we set up in the past that I’d love to see again.

Q: Is Scott Bakula going to return this season?

CF: Unfortunately Stephen J. Bartowski is dead, which I still think is amazing because Scott Bakula is the most fantastic person to work with, so the fact that we killed him… A number of times I’ve imagined, how could he have escaped? But I think it was a seminal moment for the show; I couldn’t imagine trying to undo that by bringing him back to life. But you should take that with a grain of salt, because I’ve proven to be untrustworthy when it comes to spoilers. [laughs] You never know!

Q: What can we expect with Cheryl Ladd and Tim DeKay guest starring from Sarah’s past?

CF: When we first started working on this season of the show, I didn’t think we’d have the time or ability to tell that story, the “Sarah’s Mom” story. That’s something that we’ve built out over the course of the years, just touching on it in small ways, but I thought that would be one of the storylines we wouldn’t be able to address. However, as we got into the second half of the season, you’re talking about episode 8, we decided to focus on Sarah for that episode. I have to say, for those fans who love Sarah Walker, it will be your favorite episode ever. Considering Phase 3 and all those episodes that have come before it, it is an amazing, epic story that reveals a lot of secrets about Sarah that you could never have imagined are actually back there.

We have Tim DeKay as Sarah’s original handler – Tim is fantastic in the show. He brings incredible gravitas to this backstory. It’s not our funniest Chuck story, we’re going into “epicland” in regard to Sarah’s past. Cheryl is wonderful and warm and caring and fantastic as her mother. For the Sarah Walker fanatics out there, it will be your favorite episode ever.

Q: What can you tell us about some of the guest stars coming up this season?

CF: This week we have Carrie-Ann Moss playing the improbably named Gertrude Verbanski. She runs Verbanski Corp, the competition to Carmichael Industries. We have a lot of fun with the intermingling and competition between these two companies. Carrie-Ann is wonderful. She’s funny, she’s scary, and she has the most amazing relationship with John Casey and Adam Baldwin. The chemistry between Adam and Carrie-Anne is amazing. In our third episode, we have a fight between the two of them which is the most erotically charged thing we’ve ever done on the show.

Q: What sort of a journey is Chuck on this season?

CF: We’ve always viewed the show from the Chuck emotional journey in the sense that if you look at the first season of the show, it’s about a guy who doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, it’s the quarter-life crisis. And over the intervening four seasons, we’ve taken him from the guy who doesn’t know what he wants to do to he knows what he wants to do but it’s really hard, he wants to be a spy. And then the love story with Sarah Walker. I think that the show has very much become Sarah and Chuck’s emotional journey now, because when you get married you start sharing your dreams with wife and your husband, so this season of the show is about the intermingling of those dreams. About Sarah and Chuck wanting that house, thinking about their future, wanting this company to work. And over the course of this season, realizing just how crazy it is to want to think about the future, to think about the house, think about maybe a family, and to also be in a private spy company. Unlike The A-Team or unlike the Equalizer or unlike other shows about people in private industry doing detective or spy work, our team is also considering the future from the family perspective. I think that’s the neat thing about this season, is how that family perspective effects the spy team and the missions that they want to go on and who they want to be. So it’s very much about Chuck and Sarah and their dreams.

Q: A lot of fans have been not so happy about Morgan. What can you say to assure them to stick with the ride?

CF: You have to imagine that we’re telling the first few chapters of the final season of the show, with the Morgan story. I love Josh Gomez and the Intersect, and I think what he’s done with it has been really funny. We have some incredibly funny stuff going on. It’s testing the bounds of the show, especially here in the first half of the season, the Chuck/Morgan bromance is very much at the heart and center of the show, and how Morgan getting the Intersect affects that is a real change for the show. Of course the fans are looking at a show that’s changing, and also at a relationship which has been the same, for the most part, since Morgan learned about Chuck being part of the spy world and joining the team. Things are changing. There’s a really big difference in what’s happening to Morgan and how that affects the Chuck/Morgan relationship. The first three episodes of the season are certainly about that. That’s the first chapter of this season.

I don’t want to give anything away, but we wanted to address all of our big stories in the final season of the show. I think where we left last season, focusing on Chuck and Morgan and how this affects them is certainly important. It’s not the entire season – we have Casey, we have the Chuck/Sarah relationship – but it’s certainly where we began. But where we start now, each episode will change. From the episode that comes on Friday night [5.02], we will end in a far different place than where we began at the beginning of 5.01, and by the end of 5.03 things will be changed again. So it’s like this season of the show, every episode will be different, and by the end of each episode, the core dynamic of the show will be changing. It’s not as if we’ll be settling in and saying this is the show from here on out. There’s 13 episodes. We will be trying to blow it out each episode this season. So if it feels like we’re pushing the story and we’re being dramatic and we’re messing with the foundations of the show, the answer to the question is yes, we’re doing that. Because it’s the final season of the show, and we want to tell the most exciting story possible.  Nobody’s safe. There’s no part of the show that isn’t game right now, and that’s the fun part of breaking the show and writing the show and seeing what our actors do with that. There’s a lot of things that are going to be changing, even here in the beginning of the season.

Q: When you say nobody’s safe…

CF: I’m just going to leave it at that. (laughs)

Q: Has there been talk about continuing in another medium?

CF: If Chuck survives episode 13, I love the character and I love the show, and if there was another way to do it, that would be awesome. But right now we’re just focused on delivering an epic finale to the show. But you never know what would happen out in the future, but then again, that’s if Chuck and Sarah and Casey and the rest of the team survive the final episode. You never know how cruel a writer I could be. (insert *mwahahaha* here)

Q: Do you prefer to have a show that ends with a definitive ending or do you prefer to have an open-ended show where the mythology could go on for movies or just for fans to mull over where these characters go next?

CF: In the past I’ve always a person who enjoys an ending that feels more like a prologue than an epilogue, I love those endings, and that’s what we’ve done in each season of the show. The real question right now is will we do that for the finale, and I have to be honest, that’s what we’re working on at the moment up on the board in the writers’ room. It’s quite an emotional thing to try to find that perfect ending, and we have a number of them right now. I have a natural inclination to love those moments of ‘what’s the exciting story that’s going to happen next’, but we also have a unique opportunity to do a proper epilogue ending here at the end of season 5. You’ve found a man in debate with himself at this moment.

Q: Will we see any more from Lester or Jeff in a web series or spin-off or maybe a comic book series?

CF: I love all those ideas. I love watching Vik and Scott together, they’re an incredible duo. In regard to the band, their story is going to change in a big way in the next couple of episodes. Everything will change inside the Buy More, especially in regards to Jeff and Lester. There’s a lot of really interesting things that are happening there; it’s one of the things I’m really excited to see what you guys think of when those changes start to happen. So in regard to the band, we will not see them for quite some time because of those changes. By episode 5, we’re gonna see Lester in prison. There you go, an actual spoiler!

ChuckTV: Here in the final season, whose storyline is going to have the greatest payoff?

CF: Ooooh. (deep breath) Hmmm, that’s a very interesting question. I have to say that the Chuck/Sarah story will be the story that you’re talking about. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t crazy things happening in the world of every other character on the show, but going back to when we began to work on the pilot, it was a show about a guy that gets a computer in his brain and the adventures that he goes on, and very soon after that we realized it was a love story between Sarah and Chuck. Keeping that in mind, knowing the show, the Sarah/Chuck relationship will be the huge, epic, emotional payoff. In a good way or a bad way.

ChuckTV: Why you gotta be like that, Chris?!

CF: What do you mean why do I gotta be like that? I can’t just say “good way”! Fine, it’s fantastic. Take that with a grain of salt. Don’t trust me.

ChuckTV: OK, which episode are you most excited for fans to see, aside from the finale?

CF: They’re all crazy! Each episode this year is pushing the bounds of what we do on this show; they all have outrageous components. I love episode 4. It’s a very different type of show. It’s about Chuck and Sarah going undercover at a Buy More convention. I love it, it’s a very sweet, very different type of show. Zac directed an episode in “Chuck vs. the Hack-Off.” In episode 3 this year we’ve got the Chuck/Morgan relationship, it comes to an amazing head. Each episode takes the show in a new and exciting direction. Episode 7, which is our Christmas episode, which currently is airing after Christmas, is also an incredible, high-intensity episode. And I’ll say it again, episode 8 this season, Sarah Walker’s backstory, is for those fans of the show who love Sarah, and I certainly count myself as one of them. It will be a jaw-dropping episode. Everything. I’m saying everything!

Q. When it was announced that this was the final season, what was the vibe like in the writers’ room, knowing that you had to wrap up the show?

CF: The vibe has been fantastic among the writers as well as the production and the crew. We love these characters, from myself and Josh [Schwartz] to the writers and the cast, these are characters that are very near and dear to our heart. We just want to tell this last chapter in an amazing way and you can see it in all aspects of the show. I don’t think it dawned on us until Comic Con that we were ending the show. I think it was that moment when we realized, ‘Oh, this is coming to an end.’ It’s been emotional, but I couldn’t be more proud of our team.

Q: How does not having the Intersect affect Chuck emotionally, now that more is depending on him?

CF: I think the fact that Chuck has a company that he wants to see succeed, and that he wants to give Sarah the life that she’s always dreamed of, and that he doesn’t have the Intersect, is that he’s found himself in a certain way. He now wants to succeed in a big way, he’s driven. I think that’s the neat thing about Chuck is that we’ve gone from season 1 when he didn’t want to be a spy to now he’s driven to be a spy. This season is very much an exploration of what his dreams are and what he’s willing to do to get them, and I think that it’s changed from season 3 where Chuck was willing to do some very heavy things to become a spy. Now that Chuck shares his dreams with Sarah, he’s a different guy. I think that you’ll notice throughout this season, him struggling with the idea of what it means to have your own spy company and what are you willing to do to have success and to have that house and that perfect life.

Q: Why do you think the fans have such a loyal connection to the show?

CF: I think that each and every person who watches the show watches it for different reasons. We have so many different characters that when we built the show we kind of we knew Chuck was the star of the show but we also have Sarah Walker who could be the star of her own show and we have John Casey who could be the star of his own show and I think that this show gives everyone an opportunity to come into it; that it’s a different show for different people. And I think that’s really exciting and that’s what I kind of like about doing a hybrid show, part comedy, part spy show, part action comedy, and I think everyone has a different thing that they love and that’s a really neat thing. And I think that in talking to our fans you see that.

We went to Chicago with Vik and Scott and Ryan McPartlin and it was amazing at the convention there the passion for Jeff and Lester and for Ryan’s character and that’s amazing for me. The fact that these characters, when we did the pilot we could count the number of lines on my left and right hand, that there’s an audience for them as well and they’re passionate about their characters much like we are about writing stuff. And I think that’s a neat part of the show.

The other thing is, it’s a show about spies and about spy stuff but it’s also about their home lives and their family lives and the fact that Adam Baldwin who plays John Casey is not only amazing in the spy world, but there’s his friendship with Alex and his back story and we found that our back stories are so much a part of the show and we’ve kind of used these as a way to explore these characters, and I love it because it shows a lot of things. And I think that Chuck fans are people that watch TV. They know TV they know movies they know music and so I think that the show is kind of a conversation about things that we love. So sometimes it’s in the jokes and references and sometimes its like the structure of the show and also what are we doing. The show itself is an allusion to the things that Chuck and Chuck fans are passionate about.

Q: Can we expect anything special from the DVDs with it being the final season? 

CF: Right now the DVD people at Warner Bros are working on some really cool stuff and mostly it’s kind of tied to the idea that this is our final season of the show so we’ll have some really emotional stuff there. I think that I was talking to Yvonne and it’s like, every night now when we wrap our episodes and we go home from work, it’s an emotional experience because we know there’s an end date on the fact that we won’t be doing this after the New Year. And I think that the DVD extras will certainly reflect that.

Q: With Chuck being the underdog going up against the World Series, was that planned? The fact that Morgan went on a rant, did you guys know that you would air around the time of the WS or was that just kismet that you guys would be going up against game 7?

CF: We did not plan to go up against the most exciting game 7 of the World Series ever. The lesson we learned Friday is do not mess with baseball. We did not know when we did that joke which is the think about baseball joke when Morgan prematurely zooms I think that’s my joke and I think that I was tempting the fates. I should have known when you say anything about baseball your tempting the fates. I did it and I blame myself.

Q: How did you get the “Toes In The Sand” acronym to go through the censors?

CF: It’s all about the periods. So long as was an acronym and there was a point that we had to argue that we wanted to be able to spell it out but as long as it was an acronym and we were doing a really spot on joke but I assumed at some point we would pull out some of those references.

Q: One of the things you guys sort of mention but then leave it open or that he could come back was that you guys cover up Tony Hale’s death. Is that something that might come up or is there something else from the past that might be coming back? 

CF: I think there are some things from the past that will come back to haunt Chuck. For the longest time, because Tony Hale is such a national treasure, we tried to figure out a way to bring him back into the show. And we’ve come up with the idea that he would have a brother, and we had a great name for him, I don’t remember the name but he had a brother who would be searching for him and it would be of course an identical twin played by Tony Hale. But we never found the perfect place that we could do that story. But just imagine you know it’s not canon but he’s still trying to figure out what happened to his brother.

Q: You also said before that you might not be as nice of a writer finishing up the season. Will that be something that you’re going to do a “Joss Whedon” on everybody?

CF: I’m always really gun-shy about killing off characters. You know we’ve done it in the past and it’s been these epic moments with Tony Hale and Stephen J. Bartowski. You never know. We certainly have some very big things and I don’t want to give anything away. But I’m always gun-shy about killing off characters and but then again it is the final season of the show so… everything will change by the end of the season.

Q: What can you tease about Ellie and Awesome’s journey?

CF: Their journey is kind of like Chuck’s in a way that they started off the show being more mature than Chuck. They had jobs and careers and now they have a baby. And here in the beginning of the season we’re certainly going to be clocking back in and seeing what’s been going on there. But I think going into the 2nd half of the season, their big over arching story is that they’ve got big stuff in the future and it’s time for them to start making decisions about where they want to go and what they want to do. And for Ellie to think about, is it time for Ellie to cut the strings and not feel that she has to take care of her brother at every event? They’ve got a big future in front of them so that’s something that we’re going to be getting into. And the other part of the show too is one the things over the course of the first few seasons is that she’s probably the brighter of the two siblings and she certainly can be helpful to Chuck and the things that are going to be happening in the spy world as well as the mythology of the Intersect.

Q: Obviously all this talk about the final season you seem really ready to kind of close it out but in the off chance that something happens and NBC orders more you kind of would you accept it or would you tell them that this is the way you want it to end?

CF: I think if someone were to offer me that chance to write more Chuck stories I would always say yes to it because I love these characters, but what we’ve done in the past is we’ve kind of shut down the show and reconvened the writers room and start over again but we would do that in a much bigger way. It’s something we’ve done in the past and we’ve been able to figure out how to do but we would have to reconsider some things and start over. Essentially build out a season 5.2. It’s exciting the idea that we could keep going and tell more stories but it’s a daunting task. We could do it again but I don’t think about that bridge until I’m half way across it and both sides are burning down. That’s the usual here at the Chuck show.

Q: So there’s a little hope, I mean a small flicker?

CF: A small flicker or is it the fire burning at both sides of the bridge. But we adore the show, we adore these characters and if there was a way, be it comics or at the theater or whatever that may be, that would be neat. But right now we’re focusing on the 13.

Q: Since you guys have got this hero/geek in Chuck, have you guys over the years marveled at the fact that nerds and geeks have become a kind of a cool thing since Chuck has been on the air? 

CF: I think that Chuck came on at a very specific time where everyone was getting to know their IT officer at work, and it’s an amazing age we live in right now where everything is changing to such an extent that the people who make computers and the people that sell computers and the people on the nerdier side of the world are famous as well. They’re people that we look up to as well. It’s just how the media and communications are changing the world so it’s a really exciting time. And I think that Chuck Bartowski was there in 2007 as kind of like a hero for this group so I think it’s neat to see the things that Chuck was obsessed about and the things that we were obsessed about are things that are changing the world right now. So it’s certainly an exciting time.