Castle type TV Show network ABC genre Crime

Castle (Nathan Fillion) and daughter Alexis (Molly Quinn) are on the outs on ABC’s Castle, but things won’t stay sour for long for this beloved father-daughter duo, according to executive producer and creator Andrew Marlowe.

In fact, Monday’s episode will delve deep into the issues they’re facing in light of his engagement and tackle head-on how his upcoming union with Beckett will affect their small family unit.

Marlowe teases that and SO much more (like a baby…) in the following Q&A.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Let’s talk first about Castle and Alexis. They’re not in a good place right now.

ANDREW MARLOWE: What we want to do is present an honest relationship between them. She’s growing up; she’s looking for freedom. The way she’s going about it, she thinks she’s being mature. From Castle’s point of view, it isn’t necessarily the best decision. So it was kind of like everybody’s right and everybody’s wrong. These two are facing challenges, and, to me, these challenges are deeply rooted in the Castle/Beckett relationship. It’s no mistake that she showed up with [Pi, guest star Myko Olivier] right after Castle and Beckett got engaged. What’s nice is that this week’s episode is our first good, big step towards healing the Castle/Alexis relationship. Of course, Beckett, in terms of being engaged to Castle, has to struggle with how she fits into the family. I think she knows where she fits in with Castle, but where does she fit in with Alexis? Where does she fit in with these two people who have spent so much time together and have been such a unit? So it gives us really good territory to explore.

Do Alexis and Beckett (Stana Katic) have a chat in the episode?

I think Alexis is struggling with it. I think both girls are polite, so I don’t think fans should expect a yelling match. We don’t like to go soap here — “You stole my father!” “You’re being immature!” I think we present a more sophisticated version that’s, hopefully, just as satisfying and moving.

Has the Pi hate surprised you?

No, because he’s the character we’re supposed to love to hate. And I think from Alexis’ point of view, the audience can understand why she’s attracted to him. And anybody who is a father can understand why Castle does not have necessarily happy feelings towards Pi. But I think it’s complicated. I think there’s a group of fans who just want us to deal with the engagement and don’t want any distractions and don’t understand why we’re spending time with Alexis. But we have plenty of time to deal with the significant engagement and the pressures on our characters as we move into the spring. But sometimes when you make choices in life there are unintended consequences, and I don’t think Castle necessarily saw the unintended consequence of his engagement to Beckett [and didn’t anticipate] it causing a bit of a backlash with his daughter as they’re both trying to find their new roles in the universe and in each other’s lives.

I don’t get the hate for the storyline, but I will say if my sister came home with Pi, it would really be my nightmare come true.

It’s kind of every father’s nightmare. And by the way, Pi is probably a really nice guy. But, you know, as somebody who has children who has come home with people, you try to be generous. They’re probably great, but it’s not what you imagine and, by the way, it gets in the way of your relationship with that person because they’re growing up and they’re changing. And Castle is growing up a little bit too and things are changing with him. So not to present those stresses feels dishonest. And we’re at the point where Castle and Beckett are settling into their engagement and the big questions about the date and the guest list and all of that sort of stuff that we hope to play around with in spring. Because those aren’t looming over their heads right at this moment, we felt like we had an opportunity to present something that was interesting that was going to challenge a couple of our characters and make them grow. And also, by the way, make Beckett grow because she’s not just marrying a guy. She’s marrying into a family.

They were spending a lot of time at each other’s places last season and this season. When are we going to see them actually move in together? And address those formalities?

More and more as we go along. And in the episode “Murder Is Forever” [airing Nov. 11], where we have a relationship therapist who’s murdered, there’s a [part of the episode] that confronts exactly that — what is the dance that you do when you start cohabitating with someone, when you start taking those first steps, when you’re sleeping over often and suddenly a place that has always been somebody’s personal space becomes a shared space? What negotiations do you have to do? So [in the episode] Beckett starts to not-so-subtly express her desire for some changes. And of course, Castle feels a little bit invaded, like when you date a guy in your 20s and you start dating this girl and she starts spending some time over and maybe she doesn’t like your Star Wars posters or maybe she wants to put candles in the bathroom. What does that look like and what does that look like to Castle and Beckett? So we have fun with that.

What else is coming up?

We go to some darker territory in November with, it seems, a serial killer who arises who seems to have a fixation on the Lanie character and maybe Esposito. [The killer] knows about their relationship. It’s an episode that has a number of surprising twists and challenges everybody at the 12th Precinct in a significant way. Then at the end of November, we have a really great fun, funny episode that starts in a very dramatic way. We have a victim who arrives at a church on a snowy day holding a bundle, and he’s been shot. As he struggles up the aisle, just before he collapses dead, he hands the priest a bundle that turns out to be a little baby boy. It’s not this guy’s baby; we don’t know whose baby it is. So Castle and Beckett end up being accidental nannies to this baby, and, of course having the baby in the precinct triggers all of Ryan’s (Seamus Dever) fears because he has one on the way. And we get to see Castle and Beckett playing house and taking a big step forward in their relationship.

This is a little different from a dog.

Yeah, this is no dog. It’s completely different. And through the course of the series so far, they haven’t talked about whether they want more kids. Does Castle want more kids? Does Beckett want kids? We kind of brought it up in the time-travel episode about their future, so we touched it there. And we get to have a real good bite of that [again] and find out how folks feel.