Cherished characters picnicked on a Cambridgeshire meadow, and all seemed right with the world as Grantchester ended its impressive 11-season run on PBS Sunday, August 2. But the emotional finale wasn’t without its heart-stopping moments. Warning: Spoilers for the Grantchester series finale ahead.

At one point it looked as if the Masterpiece series might actually kill off Geordie Keating (Robson Green), the police detective whose unofficial investigative partnership with a trio of vicars was key to closing cases. After he was shot at the end of the previous episode, Geordie’s possible death was on the mind of showrunner Daisy Coulam as she wrote the series’ 75th and final installment. “I just think it [would have been] too dark for us,” she told TV Insider.

Producing the last words the Grantchester gang would utter was hard enough for Coulam, who wanted the finale to be hopeful and upbeat: “I made the team give me a tight deadline because I didn’t want to write it. And it sort of weirdly flowed. It became about loneliness and finding your friends. We wanted that sense that those characters are somewhere out there still, that life goes on.” The script’s final stage directions echo that sentiment: “The river will keep on flowing,” Coulam wrote. “The swans will keep swimming.”

But the last scene the show filmed was harrowing: At the hospital, Geordie’s condition had taken a turn for the worse. Rishi Nair, now in his third season as Alphy Kottaram (a.k.a. Handsome Vicar No. 3), recalled that his costar still found a way to keep the mood on the set light.

“He’s getting wheeled into a room, and we think Geordie’s dying,” Nair recounts. “On one of the takes, Robson held up a piece of paper [that said], ‘Actor looking for work. Please knock.’”

Geordie’s plight brought out a harsh side of Alphy that was as surprising to the actor as it was to viewers. After Alphy and police detective Larry (Bradley Hall) scuffled with the perp who shot Geordie, Dexter Sutton (Sonny Ashbourne Serkis), when they found him in Geordie’s hospital room, the fugitive showed up at the church bleeding from a stab wound he’d received in the encounter and defiantly demanded the vicar absolve him. Alphy obliged but, believing Geordie had died, seemed content to let Dexter expire instead of calling for help.

At that point, the vicar felt as if he’d been abandoned by everyone, including God. “He felt like another person,” Nair says of those scenes. “As an actor, when you are prepping, you always think about what the character would do and how he would feel. I threw that all away and thought, What would Alphy not do? That’s probably what he would do in that situation.”

But Geordie arrived in time to help Alphy see the light. He had recovered enough to come to the church and remind the vicar of the power of prayer, and the impact that Alphy and his predecessors, Will (Tom Brittney) and Sidney (James Norton), had on his life. Says Coulam, “I had this image of Geordie walking down the aisle in the sunlight. Alphy feels like he’s in the dark, then light floods in, and in that moment, it’s about friendship.”

That wasn’t the only life-changing moment for the English villagers: Leonard (Al Weaver), the former curate who spent most of Grantchester’s run searching for purpose, and his partner, Daniel (Oliver Dimsdale), became parents when Daniel agreed to take custody of young Raymond (Jax James) once the boy’s dying father passed away. Not something you’d expect in 1963, and they were overjoyed at the direction their lives had taken.

“They’ve been through so much, and we wanted to give them the ending their characters deserved,” Coulam says. “We danced around this story for quite a while because it probably wouldn’t have happened like this.” It was executive producer Emma Kingsman-Lloyd who made the decision. “Emma just said, ‘Let’s just let them have the boy.’ It’s unconventional, but so is this little strange family that’s built up around the vicarage,” Coulam shares.

And speaking of children, the episode also showed the baptism of Larry and Jennifer’s (Melissa Johns) daughter, Daisy. But Coulam wasn’t the one who gave the baby her name: “I put ‘Lily’ in the script, which is my granny’s name,” she says. “It was filmed as Lily, then when they recorded the sound, they changed it. Emma went, ‘I hope you don’t mind.’ I was very touched.”

In the end, Geordie opted to retire from the police force (and it was Green’s suggestion that he bequeath his hat to Larry). But that doesn’t mean his investigating days are behind him. As the episode came to a close, he informed Alphy about a dinosaur skeleton that had disappeared from a Cambridge college. The police weren’t looking into it, so maybe they could examine it and…you’ll have to imagine what happens next.

“It’s nice to think that these two are still doing things,” Nair says. “It feels like if you walk into a pub in 10 years’ time, you might see them having a pint, discussing a crime over it.”

Grantchester, Seasons 1-11, PBS app (with Passport) and PBS Masterpiece Prime Video Channel