QG FEATURE: The Making of Andy and Rebecca's Wedding

When did you start working on this story line?
I’d say it was probably around the time season 1 was wrapping up, so sometime in the first half of last year.

Was Joe Fish always intended to be the villain who disrupted the wedding?
He was. I’ve been toying with the idea of bringing Joe back since his death in the acid back in 2017. I never planned on the character staying dead, and the only reason he has managed to stay dead this long is probably because Queen Goo went off the air for two years. Another thing that I’ve been wanting to include in his return for years is half of his face being burnt off from the acid. I thought it was a nice touch, a way to not only inflict lasting consequences on him of sorts, but to also make him even scarier than he already is.

How did the idea of Joe coming to the wedding wearing a King Beast mask come about?
Joe’s return to the series has actually changed quite a bit since I first really started planning out his return. Originally, Joe was actually going to tie into Lucas and Lydia’s story line, a story that ultimately got shelved in favor of the Zoey and Mia story. Lucas was going to go undercover for the police to take down this big bad mobster that came to town, and it was going to be revealed that this mob boss was working with Joe. Joe was then going to remain in hiding until Andy and Rebecca’s wedding day, where he would reveal to the world that he was alive. But, like I said, that story line got scrapped. Not only that, but I feel like it would have taken away some of the shock from the wedding if the audience already knew Joe was alive when he crashed the wedding. So, I figured it would be best to first have him appear at the wedding. Now, once it was decided that Joe’s return would happen at the wedding, I began thinking about how he would show up. Sure, he could just come walking through the doors, and announcing he’s alive to the world, shocking all of the guests, but I wanted it to be more dramatic than that, and I wanted there to be somewhat of a campy touch, because I love writing camp. At first, I considered doing a masquerade ball for the wedding. Andy and Rebecca’s wedding was also going to be a masquerade ball that took place on Halloween, and since everyone was wearing masks, Joe would be able to enter the party undetected. Obviously, I was being a little too ambitious with that idea, because it hinged on Andy and Rebecca’s wedding airing on Halloween 2020, and here it is June 2021. Not only that though, but I’m not sure a masquerade ball is really Andy and Rebecca’s style anyway. After going through a few other ideas, including having Joe show up to the wedding posing as Lucas, a new idea occurred to me. Why not bring Joe back disguised as King Beast? There is already a King Beast mask out there, and we never did specify what happened to it after Michael Stanpatos was unmasked, so I thought it would be an interesting idea if Joe stole the mask, and used it to attend the wedding. Then of course that meant I had to decide on what happened to the real King Beast. Do I have Joe holding him prisoner? I could, but it seemed more Joe’s style to cut the brakes on King Beast’s car, with the intention of killing him. Plus, it meant we could have the real King Beast place a call to Josephine to let her know he wouldn’t be able to make the wedding and why, all while Josephine is staring right at this other guy who she thought was King Beast. Those scenes were really fun to write, building the anticipation to the confrontation between Josephine and the imposter, because after she received the call, she played it smart and tried to pretend she didn’t know anything. It didn’t last though, and after he figured out he had been found out, he pulled a gun on Josephine.

Before Joe was revealed, Daisy interrupted the wedding. Why have two interruptions?
I had Daisy interrupt the wedding for two reasons. One of them was that I wanted to try and fake the audience out. I wanted them to think that maybe now that Daisy had interrupted the wedding and failed, maybe Andy and Rebecca would be able to finish the ceremony. The other reason I had her interrupt the wedding was because I needed an excuse to have Dylan and Daisy at the castle when it blew up. This whole event was designed to involve all of our main characters, and since Dylan and Daisy aren’t on good terms with Andy and Rebecca, I needed a reason to have them show up at the wedding. Not only that, but them being there and then leaving gave us someone to find and rescue Josephine in the river, so she could go inside and expose the imposter.

Was the plan always to have the castle blow up?
Not always. Originally, my plan was to have Joe crash the wedding, and then he was going to shoot Rebecca. That’s dramatic, right? But then, I thought it would be so much more exciting and more of a cliffhanger that instead of having Rebecca shot, I could blow up the Goo Living Room, leaving the audience with the cliffhanger of who survived.

What can we expect from the fall out of this event?
For starters, I want to make sure the audience knows that this wasn’t just some flashy event with zero consequences. People do die as a result of the explosion, and those that don’t die are going to be impacted by the people who did die. I’d say most of the season 3 story lines are created as a direct result of the explosion. No one escapes that explosion unscathed, even if they do survive. As for those who didn’t survive...don’t make assumptions about who survives just because you believe the character may be seen as essential. There are quite a few characters on the show that I see as essential, and at least one of them dies in that explosion. So I suppose that is my message to the audience about what to expect from the fallout. Expect the unexpected.