Gavin & Stacey fans tuned in en masse to watch last year’s finale ― the show’s last-ever episode, which aired on Christmas day.
Since then, writers and actors Ruth Jones and James Corden have given viewers another last-ever treat, sharing behind-the-scenes details in Wednesday’s Gavin & Stacey: A Fond Farewell documentary.
In that episode, James revealed that a line uttered seasons ago by his character, Smithy, meant he and Nessa (Ruth) had to “end up together.”
“No one would ever say, did he choose Nessa or Sonia?”, he shared in the documentary, adding she “wasn’t in people’s minds.”
According to James, the pair’s romantic fate was sealed long before the last-ever show, and even before Nessa proposed to Smithy on last season’s cliffhanger.
He said that when Smithy asked Nessa not to marry Dave Coaches (the pair have had multiple flings, one of which was revisited in the show’s original run), it was clear the couple were meant to be with one another.
“Probably from when we first ― the first Christmas special that we did, [when Dave] proposes and Smithy says, ‘Don’t marry him.’ And from that minute on, it felt like they have to end together,” James claimed in the doc.
Of course, Dave Coaches ends up being the one to drive Smithy to Nessa in the finale’s romantic twist.
“And that’s what he says in this last scene, ‘I know it’s messy and not perfect, but that’s because we’re messy and not perfect’,” the actor added.
“You know that there’s this connection from day one, when [Nessa] handed [Smithy] a pizza,” Ruth opined.
“And this love-hate relationship that produced a child ― it’s finally getting its payoff. Which I think is what everybody wants.”
But Ruth Jones said that once we’d seen the pair get together, we could never see their actual marriage.
“When Smithy and Nessa got together, that really is the end, because we can never see them actually together,” she commented.
“Seeing Smithy put the bins out, it just won’t work.”
I reckon Nessa might disagree with you there ― but aside from the writers’ latest documentary, it does seem like Gavin & Stacey has officially completely wrapped.
“It is time to go,” Ruth Jones said at the end of the BBC documentary.
