Last summer, New Girl creator Liz Meriwether huddled at a West Hollywood restaurant alongside the comedy’s co-show-runners Brett Baer and Dave Finkel. For the first time, their series was on the brink of being canceled, and the trio had gathered over eggs to figure out how to sell the network on one final chapter.

They’d ended the previous season on an uneasy note, tying up loose ends as neatly as they could while leaving a few inches of wiggle room just in case. Nick and Jess finally reconciled with a passionate elevator kiss. Cece and Schmidt were about to become parents. Winston was on the path to reconnecting with his father. The once-buzzy sitcom had gradually morphed from “adorkable” upstart hit to solid performer to a series firmly on the cancellation bubble, one that seemed to be curiously ignored by its home network in its most recent season.

“I was so afraid that we were going to get canceled and the show was going to feel like it didn’t have an ending,” Meriwether recalls. “That would have haunted me.”

After their breakfast brainstorm, Meriweather got on the phone with Fox executives and “pitched her heart out,” says Baer. Meanwhile, the show’s core actors were leading another impassioned campaign—born out of the “collective panic” that hit when it looked like the series hadn’t been picked up, according to Max Greenfield. “The uncertainty wasn’t pleasant,” adds Lamorne Morris.

Zooey Deschanel, Jake Johnson, and Hannah Simone all sent e-mails to the network, asking for one last shot. “I wasn’t going to beg them for something,” says Deschanel. “But I wanted to let them know that I would like to be able to go into the season knowing that it was the last, so that we could say goodbye to the characters.”

At the eleventh hour, their efforts paid off. New Girl was picked up for a truncated eight-episode season, set three years in the future and premiering April 10. They headed into their final bow with a take-charge attitude, according to Meriwether: “You’re like, this is it. Let’s do all the things that we’ve been wanting to do.”

Meriwether, Baer, and Finkel made a list of every bit, inside joke, and character they wanted to see one last time. Return guest appearances from Jamie Lee Curtis, Rob Reiner, David Walton, and Dermot Mulroney were placed on the must list; so were Winston’s pranks, the gang’s drinking game, True American, and college flashbacks of Nick and Schmidt. Academy Award–winning make-up artist Matthew Mungle would come out of semi-retirement just to turn Greenfield into Fat Schmidt one final time.