The FX drama series The Americans has been truly excellent throughout its run, with compelling storytelling and exceptional performances from everyone in the cast. Among many highlights, it’s shown us how good Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys are in their roles as Elizabeth and Philip Jennings, KGB spies posing as Americans, it’s allowed us to watch Holly Taylor grow the teenage Paige into a compelling character as she doubted and questioned what her parents were really up to, and it’s taken us on a roller coaster, as we’ve wondered what the ultimate outcome of the Jennings family could possibly be. The fact that it’s now in its final season is bittersweet, as it’s always sad to say goodbye to such a great TV show, but it’s also exciting to know that the creators were able to write to an ending that they chose and are saying that goodbye on their own terms.

During this interview with Collider, co-showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields talked about the reality of the end of the series being so near, the emotions that come with making a final season, their plans for the day after it’s all done, deciding on the endgame they wanted to commit to, Philip and Elizabeth’s journey in the final season, where Paige and Henry (Keidrich Sellati) fit into the family, new characters, production challenges, what they’ve most enjoyed about working with this cast and crew for six seasons, and how everyone reacted to the final script.

Collider: When I spoke to you about Season 5 and asked if you were feeling nostalgic for the series yet, you said that you were in denial about the show ending. Are you still in denial, or is the fact that this is the end unavoidable?

JOE WEISBERG: It’s crushing suffering and day-to-day misery and unhappiness combined with feeling great. It’s very confusing. I’m not joking. It’s very emotional, with so many ups and downs, all at the same time.

Is it how you expected the end would feel?

JOEL FIELDS: I don’t think there was an expectation. The truth is, it’s a weird cacophony of emotions because it’s been such a wonderful experience. That’s why it’s so sad that it’s coming to an end, even though it has to come to an end. We’ve been working so hard and we care so much about it that we’re exhausted. We’re not gonna stop until we’re done, so there’s an element of just pushing through and continuing the hard work. And it’s all bound up in the emotional feeling of coming toward the end of something we don’t want to end, but has to end, and that we unequivocally feel great about. You can see how circular and painful the logic is. That’s what it’s like to be in our heads, right now. It’s exhausting.

Do you have a plan for the day after it’s all done?

WEISBERG: Yeah, we’re gonna take a rest!

FIELDS: I called Steven Bochco, almost a year ago. I called him for life advice and creative advice, and I said, “We’re getting ready to finish the show. Do you have any advice for endings?” He said, “Well, do you guys have an ending in mind?” And I said, “Yes, we do. We know how we wanna end the show.” And he said, “Well, then you’re fine. You should plan a vacation. You need to have a vacation planned for when it ends.” I thought that was good advice.

You’ve said that you knew what the ending would be, but that you had a few variations of that ending to decide between. When did you finally decide on the variation of the endgame that you were going to commit to?

WEISBERG: That’s an interesting question, but it’s hard to answer. Quite a few months ago, we picked the variation, but even up until recently, we were figuring out how to get there. Part of this season has been about making a lot of changes and adjustments to how we get there. We made some changes that felt very significant, about how we’d get there. So, even though that ending has stayed in place, the adjustments really mattered.

FIELDS: Even the small adjustments are big adjustments. I’m sure we’ll be refining it, down to the last frame in the editing room.

Have you had a panic moment, at all, where you’ve felt like you needed more episode or that you needed another season, or are you just zen about it all now?

FIELDS: The shape of it felt really right to us. I don’t think we ever felt like we needed more, and I don’t think we could have done with fewer. It really feels like it’s been just right.

WEISBERG: I think we’re beyond zen. We were so used to doing 13 episodes that doing 10 felt easy compared to 13. So many times this season, we were like, “Wow, it’s so nice doing 10!” We were very happy about the 10.

Did it feel very jam-packed with story?

WEISBERG: I don’t think so. There’s not 13 episodes of story in 10, but it’s possible that there’s 11 episodes of story. That may be true. But I think that’s less a function of it being 10 instead of 13, and it being more a function of it being Season 6.

FIELDS: The pace of things just picks up, relative to our show. You pay a price for keeping things whipped up. You get a benefit, which is that, in the moment, it’s exciting, but there’s a diminishing effect of that, dramatically, and it’s less like real life.

Did you always want to or hope to get Elizabeth and Philip to a place where they could finally and genuinely get married, for real, and not just out of necessity?

FIELDS: It’s very funny that you ask that because we had that idea in Season 1. We had planned to do it in Season 1, but we kept moving it to different episodes because it didn’t make sense. We loved it so much that we almost did it, but our better judgement kept saying, “As much as you want them to get married, don’t do it.”

WEISBERG: We had it in the structure, in Season 1, at various points, and then it came out. And then, it kept creeping into Season 2.

FIELDS: And then, we forgot about it.

WEISBERG: And in Season 5, we were like, “Oh, this really makes perfect sense! This is the time for them to get married!” We really liked that.

What can you say about Philip and Elizabeth’s journey, in this final season?

WEISBERG: The main thing that we can say is that it will feel true to their story and it will feel true to a show that, at its heart, is a story about marriage. It hasn’t been an easy marriage. If we did it right, which we hope we did, it does feel like a real marriage. It’s not gonna be an easy ride. It’s going to ask the audience to go on a journey that has ups and downs. There will be great challenges for them, so they have to fight their way through it and see what happens. That’s the heart of the final season.

Has it been fun for you guys to see where Paige has ended up, along with where Holly Taylor has taken things, as an actress?

FIELDS: It’s certainly fun to see where Holly, as a person and as an actress, has ended up. I don’t know if fun is the word for Paige, as a character. It’s more harrowing, disconcerting and harrowing, or all of the things that we shoot for on The Americans.

How does Paige feel about her role in this family?

FIELDS: She feels very much connected to her mother and connected to her mother’s passions, and commitment to the world. She, of course, doesn’t know the full scope of what her mother actually does, but it’s not exactly been a childhood of honesty, when it comes to her parents. It’s not surprising, even though she thinks she knows everything, that she doesn’t know the half of it yet.

WEISBERG: It’s exciting to see someone her age discover a sense of purpose, but at the same time, she simply doesn’t see the psychic toll that it’s taking. She’s pretty much oblivious to that. That’s scary and sad and hard. It depends on what she does with all of this. That’s what we want to find out. The story we’re telling is just the story of a life. What she does with herself and what she does with these different things inside will tell whether she makes a positive life and does positive things and makes a contribution, or if it turns into a tragedy, or something in between. Any of those things are possible. Those same questions hold for Elizabeth, both in what we’ve seen from her so far and what we’re going to find for her, in the final analysis of the story. Will it be tragic or will it be positive? Let’s find out.

Was it hard to figure out how Henry fits into things? Can his parents keep him in the dark, forever?

FIELDS: Well, we’ll see how it goes. Generally, lying to their kids hasn’t worked out great for Philip and Elizabeth.

WEISBERG: It’s so interesting, all these years, audiences have asked about Henry and we’ve said, “Yeah, we’ve got a little bit more of a story for him, this season.” But in the closing season, I can’t wait to see what people think. For us, it all comes together. The role he’s always played and what he does this season will all come together. We’ve always talked about him as the undamaged one and the real American in this whole family. How that comes together, in this final season, and what he does and what happens to him, all comes together. We think we found the right place for him, but everyone else might disagree. Paige has her mother’s Russian soul, and Henry didn’t get that. He didn’t get his father’s Russian soul, either. He got his father’s American side. He’s an American kid.

How challenging is it to bring in new characters for the final season?

FIELDS: I think it was challenging, this season. I think we came to a very good place with the characters that came in, but more than any season, we struggled with calibrating those characters right, and finding who they would be and how they would provoke the other characters.

WEISBERG: It was hard. Because it’s the final season, we were focused on the core characters more than anybody else, so that was part of it.

Were there any production challenges specific to this final season?

FIELDS: The bomb cyclone wasn’t good, but not compared to hurricanes and polar vortexes. We’re not done yet, but so far, production has been okay. Every year has its production challenges. In some weird ways 10 episodes is more challenging than 13, from a production standpoint, because there are fewer opportunities to amortize production costs. It’s harder to be efficient, the fewer episodes you have, because there are fewer places to be efficient. On the other hand, our team works together so well, at this point, that everybody is playing at the top of their game, in every department, so we’ve been pretty lucky.

What have you most enjoyed about working with this cast and crew and seeing their journey, over the series?                    

WEISBERG: Everybody seems like they’re in a very emotional space. People are in good spirits, in the sense that there’s a great comradery. Everybody wants to be where they are.

FIELDS: There’s just a lot of love, among all of the crew, and a lot of passion. Everybody is trying to wring as much of that good feeling out of the show as we all can, as long as it’s left, but it gets harder and harder, the closer you get to the end. The bitter gets stronger, along with the sweet.

What reactions did people have, when they read the final script?

FIELDS: For Christmas, we sent everybody our writers’ draft of the final script, and there were some big freak-outs.

WEISBERG: That’s also because of how emotional everyone was, anyway.

The Americans final season airs on Wednesday nights on FX.