SPOILER ALERT! This story contains plot points from Friday’s season 3 premiere of Fire Country on CBS.

In the episode titled “What the Bride Said,” catastrophe wreaked havoc on the Diego and Gabriela nuptials,

but it wasn’t because of anything Bode did after we last saw him leave the church in the season 2 finale.

Instead, a helicopter crashed through the stained glass window and cast a pall on the ceremony, prompting everyone in attendance to spring into action and help the victims. Here, showrunner Tia Napolitano addresses why she decided to delay the will-they-or-won’t-they drama and what we can expect from part 2 of what we’re unofficially dubbing Copter-nado.

TIA NAPOLITANO We talked about a lot of stuff. We really looked at what viewers are familiar with in terms of weddings that didn’t end up happening. We wanted to make sure ours was a lot different. We kicked around a bunch of ideas in the room. And then one of my writers said, ‘well, you want to crash a helicopter into that wedding, right? Bring the action to the soap.’ And I said, yeah, that’s what we’re going to do.

DEADLINE You were definitely suspending some disbelief there by having Gabriela [Stephanie Arcila] save lives in a wedding dress. Did Stephanie ever get to the point where she was saying, hey this is silly?

NAPOLITANO She was game. She loved it. And really, they’re not on duty. They’re citizens helping until the on-duty firefighters get there. So it’s not like her choice was to stop helping and to go get different clothes. She just continued to help and said ‘screw the dress.’

DEADLINE What’s at the root of Manny [Kevin Alejandro] not wanting his daughter to end up with Bode?

NAPOLITANO Manny loves his daughter and he roots for her. He loves Bode and he roots for him, too. But that dynamic, to him, seems reminiscent of him and Roberta, which was not a fully healthy relationship. He fears that Bode and Gabriela are drawn to each other for the things they bring out in each other … breaking the rules. They’re a little bit co-dependent or always pushing the envelope in a bad way.

DEADLINE Why the two-parter?

NAPOLITANO Honestly, the crew built these beautiful sets. We had that whole forest and the helicopter and all this work went into it. It was so visually spectacular, we wanted to stay in that world longer and just milk it for everything we could.

DEADLINE Will Gabriela give Diego [Rafael de la Fuente] an answer in the next episode?