FBI's John Boyd, Shantel VanSanten Detail The Conflict And Chaos That Tee Up Scola And Nina's Highly Anticipated Wedding

Love is in the air on "FBI," so let's not bury the lede: Stuart Scola and Nina Chase are officially husband and wife! But before they could get to city hall to exchange rings and lock lips, they first had to survive cartels, gunfire, inner turmoil, and a whole lot of other sticky situations. 

When Monday's midseason premiere begins, Nina is deep undercover with Luca, the son of a major narco family. The FBI eventually interrupts one of Luca's transactions as he attempts to buy a rocket launcher for an opposing crime family. The two organizations are set to gather for a wedding that will merge their businesses and thereby end their warring opposition. With Luca in custody and working toward a deal, Nina and Maggie become his dates to the big event, putting Scola more on edge than ever before. In fact, the entire case has made Scola uneasy, as his partner, the mother of his child, gets closer and closer to serious danger. It all leads to some tense conflict between the two agents who are struggling to keep their relationship afloat despite being parents whose lives are constantly on the line. 

By the hour's end, the team takes out some big names in the drug game, and apprehends Luca again for attempting to turn on Nina and Maggie in the field. When the dust settles, the whole ordeal makes Scola and Nina realize what's really important in life, and before Nina can propose to him, Scola takes out a ring and ask her to marry him. (Not-so-spoilery spoiler alert: SHE SAYS YES!) 

Below, TVLine talks to John Boyd and Shantel VanSanten about all things "Scolina," from the couple's case-long discord and crazy cartel clash, to the super sweet ending that finally saw them unite as one.  

TVLINE | Nina is front and center in this midseason return. Can you set the stage for us a bit as to what she's up to when the episode begins?
SHANTEL VANSANTEN | Oh, she's always up to something when she returns! Nina is in an undercover operation, which turns into a bigger undercover operation that she recruits Maggie to come along with her [on]. And like most of the time when Nina's around, some things don't go as planned. There's a lot of risk involved in what they do day-to-day, but it's also a chance for the audience to see what it's like when [Nina and Scola] are navigating the job and risks, side by side, in the workplace. It ends up bringing about a lot of new feelings that are maybe just a step beyond what they felt before, and that turns into a beautiful ending.

TVLINE | At the beginning, Scola seems more uneasy than usual about Nina being undercover in the field. Why is that, John?
JOHN BOYD | I think in this episode, the thing that's great, there's more of a payoff because there's the a different placement of his fear and that risk that she's taking, it's a deeper wound. When we've explored it before, it's been a point of conflict in the relationship, and this hurts. She's so all-out going for it that my fear around her judgment, she lashes out at me for that, and it's exposed in the workplace. I think that's sort of the new place that it goes in this episode.

TVLINE | Your characters get into it back at the office, with Scola telling Nina that they've taken enough risk. She even says he's like "an overbearing husband" at one point. What's Nina's perspective on this conflict and the fact that Scola may be treating her differently from his other colleagues?
VANSANTEN | The way that I justify it is, I think there's different levels of investment. She's been on this case for months, and I think the further along you get and the closer you get to the end result of taking down a big family or whatever it is that makes the world safer, there is so much at stake. The closer you get to it and the more invested you are, the harder it is to be there in your real life and to separate from anything other than the goal of seeing this through, and that becomes the priority. Obviously, we see that that hurts her relationship.

I think that she also sometimes takes for granted that he does what she does, and so he should just get it. But if he's not in the same space as her with the same investment level, I think that that's the tricky part of navigating [it], and the audience being able to see their relationship and what they do for work and why it's interesting. Even though we've played the story of, "Oh, you're taking a risk," it's like, yes, every day they go to work, there's a risk, but this one, they weren't front and center for, or this one we see has been a months and months long case, and she's really in it. I don't think the way she responded was great, but I also think that it allows us to humanize them and also to see the repair and the love that they have and deep respect they have for one another, even though they have momentary lapses in communication, like we all do.

BOYD | Scola is certainly a seasoned investigator, but there's one thing that can throw him off track, and it's the woman he loves more than anything in the world going into the abyss. I think that's extremely difficult. It's an interesting thing to explore.

TVLINE | On top of all of those challenges, how much does being parents factor into things?
VANSANTEN | I think it factors in every day of their life. Before they come to work, there's still responsibilities that exist and they've found a way that works, but it's not always going to work that way. As we see in this episode, the formula doesn't always make the best pancake [Laughs], for lack of a better expression.

TVLINE | I love that. Did you just make that up? I've never heard that one before. [Laughs]
VANSANTEN | Yes? I don't know! [Laughs]

BOYD | The line that we're exploring is that two people care about each other so much, but they also care about what they do, that their dedication and their need to make a better world takes them over. What does that do to their relationship? It's devastating. It's sad that two people can make a pact that if one of us is in a situation that's life threatening, the other one stays to protect our child, and because of our need to do that job, we go off track, and then we have to navigate that conflict. It's sad to me, the place that that couple goes, which just makes the ending more rewarding that they get through that.

VANSANTEN | But there's always a sacrifice because of the job that they've chosen, but I think we've seen season after season them being like, "Are you sure? Because this is who I am. This is what I do. This is what we do." So yeah, I think it does make it more sweet at the end, knowing that they accept the sacrifices. Sometimes the relationship is going to be the bottom priority because of a case. Sometimes they're not the best team, and sometimes then we see them repair and they are.

TVLINE | At the end of the episode, after they've survived this massive shootout, Nina says that it was the first time she felt like she wouldn't make it out alive. What else made this case and situation different for her?
VANSANTEN | It was great because it felt like a different episode than I had ever filmed. So when I said those words, it really rang true for me. It felt more tense. When we filmed, Missy [Peregrym] and I, the scene where we were in the room where the wedding between the two cartels was supposed to take place, it was a two-hour rehearsal, which we don't [usually] have time for. And we really took the time to understand all the parts. [Director] Alex Chapple and the writer Eddie [Javier Canto] and myself and Missy really worked out the parts of like, "What would I do as an agent? What's my thinking? Are we on the same page? We're in this together, we don't have comms." There were so many moving parts. And it felt like every time we would build in more people to the scene, and OK, now we're going to bring in the wedding part, and then there's this complicated relationship. Does this guy get me? And it felt really tense at the end of it, and it was. I'm grateful for that experience because sometimes you just get thrown in and you're like, hopefully that came across like it was really tense.

But also, she had a gun in her face and was a second or less away from the end. It changes you. And I don't think they always come up against those or always realize them, but it's a different thing to not be in her normal. There was just me and a gun and a millisecond, and luckily, Prince Charming came along and saved her life, but I think that there is that moment of fear that came in there that maybe isn't always there because she's just impulsive with what her gut tells her, so it did actually feel different.

BOYD | Yeah, it did. It felt different for me too.

TVLINE | When it comes time for their proposal, Scola won't let Nina do the proposing. Why is that?
BOYD | I think the thing that was probably stopping him, the reason he was stuck, I think he just probably needed to go through this experience. I think he didn't know why there was something blocking [him] or what was holding him up. I don't think he knew until after this case. But yeah, it's been a while, six months.

VANSANTEN | You just really needed me to take the risk so you could give me the ring.

BOYD | Yeah, he just needed the adrenaline.

TVLINE | He needed Nina to almost die with a gun in her face, and then he was like, "Oh!"
BOYD | Maybe there's some part of him that needed to hear her say like, "OK, that one was really close. Yeah, that wasn't cool."

VANSANTEN | You just couldn't let me propose to you!

TVLINE | So the wedding happens at the very end, but I have to say: I wanted to see more of everyone dressed up all fancy and celebrating! Was there more of the actual ceremony in the script or anything that was shot and cut?
BOYD | That wedding scene, the way that part of the story was going to be told, was sort of like a montage-y cherry on top of the story. The proposal scene was really the meat of their relationship and the story, the decision to make it official.

VANSANTEN | I think we live for weddings in life. We love love. So, of course it's something that everybody wanted to see more of, which is a testament to the way it's shot. The writers had this brilliant idea that the audience was left wanting to know more. But I think that if you watch their love story along the way, so much has been said and experienced and gone through that having that moment, leaving people wanting more — well, I don't know, maybe they'll write more — I'm grateful that they had the proposal scene because that's the real, vulnerable, intimate moment of it all. The saying "I do" is almost like for everyone else. In that [proposal] moment, we got to see what was for them.

TVLINE | Now that "Scolina" is official, does that mean we'll start to see Nina more regularly on "FBI"?
VANSANTEN | I don't know! All the fans of the show can say all the things they want because I know that everyone is listening, the powers that be. I never thought they would get married, and people have been saying they wanted it for years, so you never know! I'm around. [To Boyd] Maybe you'll let Nina be on another case if it's not risky! Yeah, you never know.

TVLINE | There's a new "FBI" spinoff debuting right after the "Scolina" wedding airs. Any chance we might see either of your characters pop up on "CIA"?
BOYD | I'm working on my pitch. Of course, everyone wants to go hang out at "CIA." But yeah, my hope is that I get to go over and see them. I hear amazing things. For them to be in this family of TV making... Jeremy [Sisto] has been, Alana [De La Garza], Missy [Peregrym]...

VANSANTEN | I think it's great that they have something new and fresh that they're doing, and then you get to pop in with some old faces and that will make people excited. But what they're doing is great and we always want to be a part of their world.

BOYD | Maybe they need a married couple for an undercover gig!

TVLINE | Looking forward to the back half of "FBI," any there any particular storylines that you're excited for people to see? What can you tease?
BOYD | There's a great action sequence that we got to do that involves a semi-truck. OA, Eva, and Scola go anonymously undercover to steal drugs from a drug cartel, so we spent three days shooting this huge action sequence that's gonna be amazing. It was really, really fun. It was wild in the freezing New York winter, like the week that it was 0 degrees, but yeah. Juliana [Aidén Martinez] driving, we've got hoods on. It was something!