As Emmy nominations approach, Vanity Fair’s HWD team is once again diving deep into how some of this season’s greatest scenes and characters came together. You can read more of these close looks here.

THE SCENE: SCHITT’S CREEK SEASON SIX, EPISODE 14

The final season of Schitt’s Creek saw David Rose (Dan Levy) go full groomzilla in planning his dream wedding to Patrick (Noah Reid). Then the series finale opened with David receiving some nightmarish news: a torrential downpour has dashed his extravagant outdoor vision. He has no emergency tent. (“I wanted the wood-fired pizza oven,” David explains, full panic meltdown. “And we couldn’t afford both.”) And the officiant—haikuist Fabian—has cancelled.

It’s a capsule disaster that incites the Rose family to rally once again for the finale’s climactic scene—making the emotional apex feel hard-earned. Alexis Rose (Annie Murphy) walks David down the aisle (in a bridal gown, but still!)—a show of sibling closeness no one would have predicted in Season One when sister and brother argued over who would be murdered first in the event of a motel break-in. Matriarch Moira Rose (Catherine O’Hara), in her last performance of the series, officiates—her diva impulses overpowered by pure motherly affection. And Johnny (Eugene Levy) and Stevie (Emily Hampshire), the Rose family’s unofficial fifth member, dab tears of pride from their eyes as David shares his most vulnerable words yet—proclaiming his love for Patrick in front of the entire town.

Series co-creator and star Dan Levy laced the heartwarming showcase scene with flashes of deliciously absurd comedy authentic for the Rose family members. (Moira manages to top herself in the wig and wardrobe department, an awards-worthy feat in itself). And, keen to include the at-home audience in the Rose family’s big milestone, Levy planted clever homages to previous Schitt’s Creek jokes and storylines that would satisfy the show’s most loyal viewers.

Given how much Schitt’s Creek championed queer relationships, it made sense to Levy to frame the finale episode around David and Patrick’s wedding. “I thought to myself, What a beautiful way to celebrate what the show has always advocated for,” Levy told Vanity Fair. But he was also cognizant of avoiding TV wedding tropes. “When you end a show on a wedding—which happens quite often in television, because it’s a great device to bring people together and it’s celebratory and it’s emotional—the big challenge is, how do you do something in a way that people haven’t seen before? But in a way that also gives the fans of the show what they want, and then some?” He joked, “I’m getting flashbacks of anxiety” thinking about it.

“I knew that watching Catherine officiate the wedding was going to be something that she could really crush, both in terms of extracting the comedy and the drama,” Levy said. “And knowing that Moira was an actress, knowing that this is a character that has seized any and every opportunity to perform, what better showcase for a performer than to officiate a wedding?”

Levy had extracted some final-season drama by having David choose Stevie to be his maid of honor, in lieu of sister Alexis. But at the last minute, in a touching surprise, David tells Alexis that he wants her to walk him down the aisle. Knowing that Alexis would subconsciously hijack this opportunity to make the wedding, well, a little bit Alexis—even in her evolved state—Levy plotted for the character to wear a bridal gown.

“It was just so in line with her character,” said Levy. “But also the double entendre and the callback of [season one, episode three] ‘Don’t Worry, It’s His Sister.’ So, a really fun thing to reference the fact that at the very last episode, they walk down the aisle with people potentially thinking they’re husband and wife.”

When it comes to over-the-top wigs and clothing, Moira has always delivered—choosing the most hilariously anachronistic lewks for her small-town adventures. (See: Moira’s black studded leather gloves and Tim Burton–inspired hat for Amish Country.) So while Levy paid special attention to several costumes in the wedding—Stevie’s tux, Alexis’s wedding dress, and David’s Thom Browne suit—he and O’Hara knew that Moira’s officiant costume had to exceed major expectations.

“That was one of my biggest anxieties,” said Levy, “‘How can we possibly top some of the more iconic looks that Moira has shown over the years? How can we do something that is so breathtaking, and yet at the same time not selfish? Because part of the challenge of clothing Moira in that episode was that you didn’t ever want the audience to think, That’s funny, but why would she do that on her son’s wedding day?”

O’Hara said that when she first heard Moira would be officiating, the unlikely inspiration immediately came to her: “I just, in that moment said, ‘Oh, I think I should look like the pope. What about a mitre that the pope wears?’”

Said Levy, “As soon as Catherine said, ‘What if we did a pope’s hat?’ it just all clicked into place. I sourced the gown…and I just had this dream vision of really long hair that looked like it could exist in a Botticelli painting, like it could be some kind of religious-based painting. It felt timeless, but it also felt very her. And it was something that I don’t think we had ever seen before.”

The wig ended up posing one of the finale’s most difficult creative challenges. O’Hara’s wig wizard, Ana Sorys, spent weeks trying to assemble a halo of hair at the bottom of the mitre for comfort and cosmetic reasons. (O’Hara believes that her long face is better offset with a hat with a brim.) After weeks of attempting to realize O’Hara’s meticulous vision, Sorys was finally able to assemble a “hair doughnut,” as Murphy described it, by wrapping blonde hair around a tube and affixing it with the same glue Sorys used on her kitchen tiles. Sorys attached the blonde brim to some 64 inches of wig tresses she had crafted for Moira—and added pin curls to give the look softness.

The cast had a vague idea of what Moira’s officiant look would be. “But it wasn’t until Catherine walked on the set that everything became very clear,” said Murphy. “I remember everyone looked at her, and kind of drew in a breath. Then there was a silence and then someone started a slow clap. The whole set was clapping. It was the only reaction we could possibly think of.”

Said O’Hara, “It’s amazing to me that we built a character that could actually get away with wearing that darn thing.”

Levy was careful to weave a few musical callbacks into the ceremony. As the Rose family walks down the aisle, the Jazzagals sing “Precious Love”—the James Morrison song that played in the background of another major Rose family milestone in the season-two episode “Happy Anniversary,” when the family members all said “I love you” to one another. The Jazzagals then segued into a cover of Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best”—which Patrick sang to David during the season-four episode “Open Mic”—as David walked down the aisle on Alexis’s arm.

The cast first heard the Jazzagals sing this two-parter during rehearsals. And because there were no cameras present, Murphy said, “It actually felt like we were in a wedding. We were all in the pews, and the Jazzagals were bringing everyone to tears in this beautifully decorated town hall. And all of us, I think, really got quite emotional. Dan was crying. Then I looked back and saw an emotional Eugene Levy. And as soon as you’ve seen Eugene Levy cry, it’s like one of the saddest things.”

“One of my favorite memories of that day was Rizwan [Manji], who plays Ray, was just weeping openly,” added Reid. “Between breaks and scenes he was like, ‘Yeah, man, I just got feeling all emotional.’ Ray is the person who introduced David and Patrick. The day was full of those little moments where people just were, I think, probably a little bit caught off guard by how much they were feeling.”

Then there was the issue of Mariah Carey, David’s patron saint. When Patrick first told David he loved him, he followed it up with the ultimate compliment: “You’re my Mariah Carey.” Levy said that, as such, “I knew that I wanted Patrick to sing Mariah Carey.” So after getting clearance from Carey, he incorporated a few lines from “Always Be My Baby” into Patrick’s vows.

“It felt like a nice sort of cross-stitch of these moments that have been big for David and Patrick,” added Reid. “There’s something so powerful about the way that music was used throughout the entire series, but particularly in that wedding scene, which echoed past big musical moments.”

Levy said that once Carey had signed off on him using her lyrics, writing Patrick’s vows went quickly. “I wanted them to be really simple,” said Levy. “He was never someone who wasted time with flowery language. He was always a very direct character and someone who spoke very truthfully.”

“With David, it was a little more complicated because I wanted it to feel truthful, and I wanted him to say things out loud that he has never really said publicly before,” said Levy. “I think expressing his vulnerability has always been very difficult for that character. So to be caught up in a moment where he felt so comfortable with the people around him, having really ingratiated himself into this town and felt a great amount of comfort there, it felt like a wonderful opportunity for him—in his own selfish way—to honor this experience that happened to him by being so publicly vulnerable.”

The vows are so heartfelt that even Moira breaks her actorly facade in an unfamiliar show of motherly warmth.

“The idea that she gets overwhelmed with emotion, which is something she hadn’t really expressed over the course of her time on this show, really felt like a beautiful turn for the character—and also a really funny, strong, exciting challenge for Catherine, to play a woman who is both completely falling apart while also trying to keep it together for her son’s sake,” said Levy. “The work that Catherine did in that scene, both sobbing while also not in any way having Moira overstep, was just a testament to her brilliance. That was not an easy scene, and she made it look effortless.”

“I knew I wanted to cry because Moira never cried, I don’t think, unless it was over something trivial,” said O’Hara. “You can get kind of nervous about crying in a scene. And I’ve learned, finally, from experience, that if you overthink it or get nervous, it’s really not helpful. You just have to relax and think about everyone else in the scene. And that was really easy to think about others on that day…because I’m looking at all the sweet faces of everybody in the cast and everybody in the crew, and knowing that this was the end of our family playing together for six years.”

“And as David’s mother, to look at David and Patrick, it just—I mean, I wept when Patrick sang to David,” said O’Hara. “I had to keep turning away from camera, because I just, I don’t know. It just kept really getting me. So that alone, even without the fact that the show is ending, just looking at the two of them getting married killed me. It was really easy to cry that day.”

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