For fans of The Mick, the only thing more devastating than the Fox comedy’s recent cancellation was the cliffhanger that brought the series to a close.

A refresher: The finale ended with Mickey and the gang huddled around a freshly electrocuted Sabrina, reeling from the news that the accident could have affected her cognitive ability and/or motor functions. It was a dark way to end the season, even for a show that once blew up an old lady with her own oxygen tank, but the show’s creators stand by it — mostly because they weren’t expecting to be cancelled.

“Everybody was saying we were coming back, so we were pretty blindsided by that,” John Chernin tells TVLine, adding that Season 3 was going to be a biggie for Sabrina. “The general plan was to catch up months after the accident. Sabrina was going to be pretty f–ed up. We think [Sofia Black-D’Elia] is the most incredible actress, so we wanted to basically have Sabrina learn how to walk and talk again.”

Likening this new Sabrina to The Mick‘s version of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot, Dave Chernin says he was excited to “completely change a character in the middle of the run of a show. … I know we’ve moved past injuries pretty quickly in the past, but this was going to change the character completely. We were going to do five to 10 episodes of her leaning how to walk and speak again. After that, all bets were off.”

One idea for the now-scrapped season premiere involved Sabrina’s 18th birthday, an occasion she wouldn’t exactly be in the mood to celebrate. “Mickey wouldn’t be able to stand the thought of that, so she’d plop Sabrina into a wheelchair and take her out clubbing for the wildest night in Manhattan you could imagine,” John Chernin reveals.”We always try to find a little bit of sweetness in a f–d-up situation.”

Adds Dave Chernin, “We had so many great pairings on this show, but I don’t know that there’s a better one than Mickey and Sabrina. They’re such worthy adversaries, and there was something so funny to us about Sabrina losing a step — or five steps — in her game. We joked about Sabrina trying to insult Mickey, but she’s stumbling through the words, so Mickey would just be like, ‘I’m going to go make a sandwich and circle back when you’ve had a chance to gather your thoughts.'”

Other potential Season 3 storylines…

* Did someone say love triangle? Following Alba’s hookup with that Yale alum in the season finale, she would have found herself in a complicated romantic situation with him and none other than Mike O’Meera from Warwick. “We laughed at the idea that Mike was going to find out about the other guy and go to his office and beat the s–t out of him in front of his co-workers,” John Chernin reveals. In addition to those romantic shenanigans, Alba was generally going to be brought “back to earth a little bit” after spending the last two seasons breaking bad.

* And let’s not forget about everyone’s favorite half-blooded Pemberton! There was talk of having Chip’s real father (played by Jay Mohr) sharing custody in Season 3, forcing Chip to live with him for part of the week.

* One thing you wouldn’t have seen in a third season — or possibly ever — is Mickey and Jimmy finally putting a label on their relationship. “We worked really hard in Season 2 to make Jimmy a likable character, which we did by having Mickey s–t all over him,” Dave Chernin explains, adding that their unconventional dynamic was “such a testament to Kaitlin Olson and how selfless she is as an actress. She wasn’t afraid to show Mickey’s flaws, which scares a lot of network executives, the idea that your main character could potentially come across as unlikeable. … In Season 3, we wanted to tip the seesaw in the other direction, having Jimmy be the a–hole in the relationship.” And so the circle of strife would continue.

Your thoughts on what the future potentially held for The Mick? Drop ’em in a comment below.