[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Season 4 of What We Do in the Shadows.]The events of Season 4 of the FX series What We Do in the Shadows have been quite a wild ride, with the mansion crumbling, Nandor’s (Kayvan Novak) love life not living up to expectations, Guillermo (Harvey Guillén) becoming disillusioned with his current life status, Nadja’s (Natasia Demetriou) vampire club turning out to be less than successful, and Laszlo (Matt Berry) not knowing how to handle Baby Colin Robinson’s growth spurts. By the end of the finale, they’ve all been left having to come to terms with things not turning out as intended and decide what their next steps might be.

During this interview with Collider, showrunner Paul Simms and Mark Proksch, who spent the season bringing Colin Robinson to life from infancy through puberty and back to adulthood, talked about the relief it is to know they’ve been picked up for Seasons 5 and 6, treating every season like it’s the last, breathing new life into Colin in such an unexpected way, the initial fear about making Baby Colin work, how much they knew about the long game at the beginning of the season, what’s next for Colin Robinson, getting away with some wild story decisions, and just who came up with that bank account pin number.

Collider: Congratulations on not only getting picked up for Season 5, but also Season 6. How does it feel to get a two-season pick-up at a time when things seem more unpredictable than ever on TV?

PAUL SIMMS: It’s a great relief, but we’re not even thinking about Season 6 right now. We’re about to start shooting Season 5 in a few days, and as far ahead as we can think is one season at a time, but it is nice to know. We treat every season as if it’s the last season and just put every idea that we have into it. We don’t try to save anything up for later because there might not be a later. That’s still the way we’re operating.

Mark, I love this show and your work on it, but I’m going to miss Baby Colin Robinson. Do you miss Baby Colin Robinson, or were you happy to leave him behind?

MARK PROKSCH: When you’re dealing with as big of a storyline curve ball as this, I think leaving them wanting more is a good thing to have in your mind while you’re doing it. We touched on it and followed it through, but it’s time for grown adult Colin to come back. That said, it was fun and it definitely breathed some new life into the character for me, getting to play him.

What was it like to explore this character in a way you never could have imagined when you started doing this? From the baby to the half-child/half-adult Colin back to regular adult Colin, could you ever have had any idea where this journey would take you?

PROKSCH: No. And when you’re told that you’re going to be playing a baby in a season, you’re like, “Oh, they chose me to ruin the show. How nice of them.” But you quickly realize that we have the best writers in comedy right now. I wasn’t too concerned about it, at all, but it was something that I could never have imagined my character doing, so that was great.

SIMMS: Mark was worried. He didn’t want Baby Colin to be cute. And I was like, “Don’t worry, it ain’t gonna be.” It’s not so much Baby Colin being cute, but the relationship with Laszlo, the most curmudgeonly character. Yes, Laszlo is aggravated by him and frustrated, but seeing a slightly softer side to Laszlo was also really fun.

what we do in the shadows

Paul, in Season 3, you played the long game with Laszlo being nice to Colin because he knew what was going on, even though the audience didn’t. Was it the same for Season 4? It really feels like now that we’ve gotten to the end of it, only to learn that the house falling apart and Colin pounding holes in the wall lead to him finding a room with his journals was you guys really playing the long game again.

SIMMS: I don’t think Mark knew, at the beginning of the season, that pounding the holes was gonna pay off. I think Mark knew that he was gonna return to normal, regular Colin Robinson, but not the pounding the holes thing. I’m not sure I knew either, until I sat down to write the last script. No, actually, I did have some idea. No, now that I think about it, originally the pounding holes thing just seemed like a crazy thing for him to do. And then, as we were trying to figure out how he would reset and re-download his whole personality and memories into himself, it synced up just right.

I thought it was so brilliant. By the time we got to the end of it, I was like, “They did it to me again!” I love how, out of the blue, we see Colin show up with this mix CD for The Guide. Mark, seeing as Colin was pretty disgruntled about everyone and everything else, what was it about The Guide?

PROKSCH: When you’re in high school, you make CDs for the crush that you have. For me to have done that to Nadja, would’ve been almost incestual since she’s part of my family, in a sense. The Guide was there.

SIMMS: Part of it is that he’s going through all the developmental stages and the hormones are raging inside of him, even though, at his speed, it probably lasted for 48 hours, where he was in his teenager, “I’m in love with The Guide,” thing. That’s how we thought of the season, at the beginning, going through the whole baby to adult within 10 episodes, and trying to explore all the funny parts. One of my favorite parts in the finale is when Laszlo is saying that he’s not even enjoying his play dates anymore, and it’s Colin as a full-grown teenager, but not realizing he’s not a little kid anymore and still behaving like a little kid, which I found both funny and real.

Mark, what can you say about what’s to come for Colin Robinson? Is he just going back to being regular old Colin Robinson again now?

PROKSCH: I’m not supposed to say this, but he goes on and gets elderly, later in the season. No, I’m joking. I don’t want to get all actor-ly, but there’s a bit of a reset going on for him. As far as how I’m gonna play him this year, I’m not changing anything drastically. It’ll probably be something only I notice, so it’s probably not worth mentioning.

SIMMS: Or it’ll be something I notice in editing, and I’ll go, “What is that? Why is he doing that?”

PROKSCH: “Why is he doing that accent?”

SIMMS: These vampires, including Colin Robinson, have lived for hundreds and hundreds of years and haven’t really changed at all. They make little baby steps. Nandor learned nothing this season, from everything that he did.

It feels like one of the lessons we learned from this season is that everything, including the house, falls apart when Colin Robinson isn’t there to plan it all out.

SIMMS: Yes.

Would you say that’s an accurate description? Do you think Colin knows how much he’s actually needed, even though nobody has ever actually expressed that to him?

PROKSCH: You’re asking questions that make us uncomfortable. I think that he’s evolved and they’ve accepted him more and more, as part of the household. This solidifies that and is a great example of how far their relationship has come, to the point where they actually relied on him and they admit that they relied on him for something.

SIMMS: Yeah, I agree.

Paul, if you made up a list of all the crazy things you’ve done on this show and gave them to someone who has never seen the show, they wouldn’t believe that all of those things have actually happened. Have you ever come up with anything for this show where you thought, “There’s just no way we can do that, and we’ll never be able to pull that off,” but then you did and it was amazing?

SIMMS: Yeah, Baby Colin is a perfect example of that. There’s another idea that we’ve had, that we’ve thought it’s just impossible to do, and we’re doing that one in the season we’re about to shoot. It’s part of the fun of really thinking about the show, one season at a time, and it’s part of the basic construction of the show that we can go in so many different directions. No, I never would’ve anticipated when we started, the weird paths that the show has taken.

I have to ask whose idea it was to have the bank account pin be 420-69-24-7.

SIMMS: That was me. When you try to think of funny numbers, there’s only a handful. There’s 420, there’s 69, and then 24/7 just means that you’re nonstop.

And 666 would’ve been too obvious.

SIMMS: Yes.

What We Do in the Shadows is available to stream at HBO Max.