The following article contains major spoilers for Gavin and Stacey: The Finale.
It happened! 17 years later, and Smithy (James Corden) and Nessa (Ruth Jones) are finally married. Not without plenty of twists and turns on the way: the lion's share of Gavin and Stacey: The Finale actually concerns Smithy's upcoming wedding to Sonia (Laura Aikman), who we first met in 2019's Christmas special. It was a match made in hell, all told — such is why, encouraged by his entire entourage of family and friends, Smithy leaves Sonia at the altar and races down the motorway to catch a sea-bound Nessa before her ship departs. He confesses his love, drops to one knee, it's all very satisfying — exactly what everyone has been waiting for.
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So, the first bump in the road: the early bait-and-switch reveal that Smithy would marry Sonia, not Nessa as the 2019 special teased. “I had this idea at like three o'clock in the morning, and I called Ruth and I was like, ‘I wonder if we could trick everybody into thinking that, for the first six or seven minutes, that they're just going to watch a wedding between Nessa and Smithy?'” co-creator Corden said during a cast Q&A following a recent preview of Gavin & Stacey: The Finale, attended by cast, crew, press and other invitees. Owing to the shroud of secrecy around the twist, Sonia actor Laura Aikman didn't even tell her parents that she was back on the show. “She's hoping to film her parents' reaction, so we hope she'll capture that,” Jones said.
A recurring gag in Gavin & Stacey has long concerned Jason (Robert Wilfort) and Bryn's (Rob Brydon) mysterious fishing trip prior to the events of the series. Be it incestuous or relatively innocuous, it has long been implied that whatever occurred between them was so downright horrifying and traumatic that they are haunted to this day. You might've expected The Finale to reveal what happened at long last — but it doesn't, because that would miss the point. “I'd like to say now and forever, the joke has always been you don't find out what happens on the fishing trip,” Wilfort said. “I'm sorry everybody, but that has always been the joke, and it always will be, because it's funnier that way.”
But the big moment of the episode — the one we all hoped, and probably knew, would happen — arrives when Smithy finally proposes to Nessa at the Southampton docks, catching her just as she's about to depart on a six-month tour at sea. And the episode concludes at their downbeat pub wedding reception, closing out as many a sitcom has in TV history: with a freeze frame of the entire cast.
“Originally, [the proposal scene] was meant to be set in an airport,” said Jones. “It had to be in Cardiff Airport, and we couldn't get permission to film there. So initially we thought, ‘Oh no, this is awful, what are we going to do?’ Because it's going to be this big farewell… And then we came up with this alternative.” Corden credited Dave Ferris, the long-time production designer on Gavin & Stacey, for coming up with the proposal at port. “Sarah, our producer, was always on the lookout to make sure there weren't any paps, because that was like, the most important thing that didn't get into press, the image of James Corden down on one knee in front of me,” Jones said.
Finally, the wedding reception montage that closes out the series — chock full of nostalgia and sentiment, calling back to moments across Gavin and Stacey's 17 year run — was deliberately filmed on the last day. “We really, really felt that the last day should be the last scene, and that the last line should be the last thing that we ever shoot,” Corden said. The montage was essentially unscripted, giving the actors free rein — as such, Jones described that final day as more akin to an actual wedding than a film shoot. “We didn't really have any lines... We all learnt a karaoke song, which you never get to hear. Rob Brydon was warming up his voice… It did feel like a real wedding, sort of pub reception,” Jones said.
Most touchingly, director Christine Gernon arranged for the Gavin & Stacey theme song to be played on set after the shoot wrapped. “When she called cut on the very last take [the music began]… And that got us all going, as you can imagine,” Jones said.
“It was probably the most emotional film set I've ever been on,” Corden echoed. “So many of our crew have been with us from the start, so [it was] a wonderful way to close it all out on a Monday in Barry.”
