CHUCK: Chris Fedak Teases the Series Finale

It’s been five years, tons of nerdy references, plenty of Subway product placement and many finales that could have doubled as show-enders, but CHUCK will finally get to say a proper good-bye with its series finale tonight.

“It’s also an emotional time, these last couple days [of filming],” CHUCK co-creator Chris Fedak told a few reporters (including yours truly), who were on set back in December for the second-to-last day of production. “This show’s been a great experience for all of us. I’ve done so much that in 91 episodes it’s kind of hard to go, ‘Oh my God, it’s coming to an end.'”

While we’re not going to spoil what happens in these episodes, Fedak was willing to tease a little bit about what fans could expect in the special two-hour finale…

“We’re playing two episodes back-to-back,” Fedak noted. “Episode 12 and episode 13 will be a two-parter. It’ll play very much like a movie; it’ll be epic, it’ll be big. The finale is very much haunted by seasons past. This is an episode that’s not only a finale for season 5, but also five seasons of television. So we’re going to be bringing back a lot of things…we saw Yvonne [Strahovski (Sarah)] in the cat suit, also wearing an evening gown dancing the tango, [and] wearing some other outfits that she’s worn from time to time. There are other things in the show — it’s a show that has a lot of echoes [to the past].”

The two episodes weren’t initially planned to air on the same night, but Fedak told us he was happy they were put together since they were “more emotionally satisfying that way.” As you may have suspected, that pesky little cliffhanger of Sarah’s memories being wiped will play a major part in the show’s final hours.

“I think the Chuck and Sarah story is at the heart of the show,” said Fedak. “It’s like the show’s a romance. I think that’s what we discovered very early on in the show that the moment we put Zach [Levi (Chuck)] and Yvonne together, the show became about them. That is the through-line of the show, great characters, great emotions and an amazing cast.”

And some great guest stars. While the show is noticeably restrained with bringing back too many old characters — aside from Linda Hamilton resuming her role as Chuck and Ellie’s mother — there is a familiar face in the beginning of the official series finale.

“The opening scene of the finale [hour]… actually, we have one of the deepest into the matrix callbacks of the show,” Fedak said. “Mark Pellegrino in the opening scene, reprising very quickly a bad guy role from one of our previous seasons…he’s a Fulcrum agent, [so] we touch upon, ‘What’s going on with Fulcrum and The Ring these days?’ So the episode begins on a private jet, and Mark’s in there…I’ll say this. We shot a skydiver unit. We actually did a special skydiving unit based on what happens on-board the jet.”

Yep, CHUCK isn’t going down without unleashing some major action sequences.

“We kind of knew what kind of ending we were heading toward,” Fedak shared. “And then when we started getting into what the story would be, I think when we realized we wanted to create an episode that echoed all those seasons, it just helped us wrap our heads around what would make this episode special and different. If you’ve noticed, this episode, we’ve spent a lot of money. We’re a little over budget. There may be a few people looking for me right now. So I have to keep moving. It’s a long episode, it’s a big episode and we go a lot of different places. We blew up most of the Universal backlot a few days ago with helicopters and stuff like that. You will see. The amazing thing about the CHUCK show is that we put everything on the screen. We’re very good at that. We have a lot of big action coming up.”

As for that pesky Intersect which has caused so much trouble — and is still out there — Fedak was understandably coy about whether it would come into play in the finale.

“I would say this: I don’t think the show is about simply having the Intersect,” he allowed. “But that computer is something that has definitely haunted Chuck for years now and also haunted his father, who created it. So in some ways, it’s the ghost that keeps on cropping up at the wrong times.”

But will there be fatal consequences? The writers teased there might be a death before the series ended and we’ve now reached that point…

“Well, I don’t know if I should tell you the answer to that question,” Fedak said. “I don’t want to answer that question, but there are heavy things coming up. Heavy stuff.”

In other words, don’t be ashamed if you shed a few tears while watching the final hours.

“It’s been hard for us just making the show,” Fedak admitted. “We’ve been losing it on a scene-by-scene basis. For [our] actors who are the best, it’s been a very emotional experience. And the episode, it’s an episode that’s emotional. If people aren’t tearing up then we [have] not done our job.”

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CHUCK’s series finale airs tonight at 8 PM on NBC. Will you be tuning in?

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