THE MINDY PROJECT Post-Mortem: Matt Warburton on Mindy and Danny’s Relationship Shift

[This post contains spoilers for THE MINDY PROJECT’s fourth season premiere. Please don’t read this interview until you’ve streamed “While I Was Sleeping.”]

THE MINDY PROJECT has more good news to celebrate: Mindy and Danny are engaged!

The proposal came off of Danny meeting Mindy’s parents — and outing himself as the father of her unborn child — and Mindy dreaming of a life with her “perfect” man…and discovering that her dream life wasn’t worth it.

“I think Mindy [Kaling (Mindy)] just had a really strong vision of what that scene should be like,” THE MINDY PROJECT executive producer Matt Warburton shared. “We tried it a few different ways: where you feel like that couple in that other world, Danny sees how they could be together. I think the version we liked the best was where that door is closed in that other world. So instead of a romantic rainy night, Mindy realizes this is just a shitty rainy night. That’s the dark ending of that episode. The reason her fantasy can end is because she’s played it out, and this is a world where Danny is no longer an option for her, and she’s stuck with what she had, and that answers her question of is this life better or worse? Standing in the rain, I will never be with Danny, this world is worse…and then she gets hit by a bus.”

But though things worked out for Mindy in the real world, wedding bells aren’t completely around the corner.

“One of the things Mindy learns is there are more important things than being engaged,” Warburton said. “There’s so much going on with the characters, they’re not going to get married right away. First things first, they have to have this baby; that’s going to be addressed pretty soon. I think what Mindy has learned from this episode is that her priorities are out of whack. So even if she is engaged, she has bigger things going on. And so, we’re really going to see all the obstacles the couple is going to have with the new baby, Danny’s mom Annette is going to get into the mix — she’s difficult enough as a mom, and now she’s a grandma. The focus is really going to be on that in the beginning [of the season].”

That being said, don’t expect the engagement to be kept quiet. “Mindy can’t keep anything to herself,” Warburton laughed. “Especially a big giant ring she’s happy to show everyone.”

“I think like so many things, Mindy thinks of herself as like the star of a reality show, and everybody else at work is trying to get through the day,” he continued. “So they’re just humoring her. Morgan is maybe insisting he have a big role in the wedding — it’s not up to Mindy and Danny.”

As Mindy and Danny set out to move forward with their life, Warburton acknowledged they had fun playing with Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Mindy’s perfect man, Matt…and there is the chance he could return.

“Well, I think it’s a really interesting character. Is he real or not — does he exist entirely in a parallel universe?” Warburton pointed out. “We have talked about what if, in our real world where Mindy and Danny are together, she sees that guy? It’d be a pretty funny joke. It’s definitely a possibility [he could return].”