Castle type TV Show network ABC genre Crime

After last season’s finale shocker, the question propelling Castle‘s season seven premiere is less about whether Castle’s alive and more about his location. As fans have seen in the season’s promo, things pick up right where season six left off, with Beckett discovering Castle’s car in flames. Only her fiancé is not inside.

So while fans worry about what’s happened to Castle and Beckett works to solve the mystery, we talked with Nathan Fillion about the side of Castle he misses and whether Richard Castle will still be a wedding guy once all is said and done. Here are five teases to get you ready for the new season.

There’s no reason to worry about Castle’s emotional well-being. Despite a traumatic car accident on the way to his own wedding and what could be a kidnapping, Fillion doesn’t seem too worried about Castle’s mental state. “I think we will find that Castle is exactly where he would like to be,” Fillion said. “Castle has a particular kind of quality of life and he lives his life in a particular way. He doesn’t make the greatest decisions all the time, but he does try to live his life without regret and I don’t think that’s even a conscious decision, I think that’s just something he just kind of does. He’s just gotten away with so much for so long that he kind of lives in a wonderful, ‘Hey, life is good’ kind of mentality. I think we’re going to find him there.”

Exploring Castle’s backstory doesn’t necessarily mean things will get darker. Producers have said that the ending of last season will allow the show to look more into Castle’s backstory this year. But for Fillion, that doesn’t mean fans should expect something as dark as Beckett’s history. “The way I’ve been approaching that whole situation is Beckett is this prude of a character, she’s really hard to scratch the surface and get underneath to something deeper,” he said. “It took years and years to wear this woman down. She gets so dark and brooding and she’s often angry and just short-tempered, and Castle just wears his joy on his sleeve. He’s that kind of a man. He likes life. He loves people. So it would fit to reason that Beckett had all of this history and this crazy stuff going on that made her so tough, and here we have Castle, not so tough. He’s an okay guy.”

Yes, Castle is still a fan of weddings. As Fillion put it, Castle “wears his joy on his sleeve, and he is okay putting himself out there.” In other words, fans don’t have to worry about one accident turning him away from wanting to tie the knot with Beckett. “He’s been married twice already. It’s not like he’s gun shy. I think Castle is a man who loves life and he loves people and think that is something that will never fundamentally change about him.”

Hopefully, Castle will get back to “knowing some guys.” For Fillion, there is one side of Castle that he’d like to get back to this season. “I remember back in the day when we started Castle, he was a writer with a bunch of cops, cops who were trained to solve murders,” Fillion said. “And Castle didn’t have that kind of training, and he had to bring something to the table. And what he brought to the table was ‘I know a guy. I know this woman; she’s connected to such and such. It was when I did research for this book.’ He did all these books and all this research. He’s no dummy, and he’s made some amazing connections over the years and he would go and he would meet up with these guys and he’d have incredible things to learn from these people and they were connected and it was amazing. I would like to see more of that going on.”

Destination wedding, anyone? Fillion has mentioned before that he’d love for Castle to get married in Maui. Specifically, his dream wedding would include “an exotic location on a beach with the wind blowing where I could wear linen pants rolled up where you could see the ankles and an untucked linen shirt. Everybody’s being kind of simple and pretty. We’ll do the whole thing in one big crane shot and then everybody goes for drinks.” It sounds nice, though it’s tough to say whether anyone would want Castle to have to get on a plane for his next trip to the altar. A car accident was bad enough.

Castle returns Monday, Sept. 29 at 10 p.m. on ABC.