When historians are discussing television episodes they consider to be “a doozy,” Mythic Quest‘s “The Villain’s Feast” should be included in that conversation.

Speaking with DECIDER ahead of Episode 4’s release, series co-creator Megan Ganz and writer Humphrey Ker — a real-life husband-wife producing duo — talked about pulling off a major plot twist involving two beloved characters and dropping a bombshell in the final seconds of the episode.

**This goes without saying: Major spoilers ahead for Mythic Quest Season 4, Episode 4**

After being invited to a remote island to participate in a murder mystery game, the Mythic Quest team spends the entire evening emulating Knives Out and slowly being picked off by the veiled murderer. Much like The Traitors — which the Mythic Quest writers even shout out at one point during the episode — the innocents use their insights throughout the episode to gather intel and point the finger at their fellow coworkers. In the end, though, it was always less about who the finger was pointing at and more about which finger was being used to accuse.

After an evening of games and camaraderie, Rachel (Ashly Burch) cracks the case when she realizes that David (David Hornsby), Brad (Danny Pudi), Ian (Rob McElhenney), and Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao) all paid Jo (Jessie Ennis) to stage a party in order to accomplish respective goals. The night was orchestrated, however, by Dana (Imani Hakim) who used the stunning venue and dream scenario for her girlfriend — a self-proclaimed murder mystery-lover — to pop the question and get down on one knee. It was all just one big romantic ruse. Dana even had the MQ testing couch where they met shipped in for the proposal. Swoon!

And because a mystery is not truly over until the last second, the episode ends with Poppy connecting the clues that have been left throughout the evening — sensitivity to smell, throwing up on the boat, food items tasting weird, etc — to realize she has a bun in the oven.

For Ganz and Ker, the opportunity to pull off not only a murder mystery episode, but to pack in a proposal and a baby bombshell is what makes the job worth doing.

“It’s great fun weaving all the different elements through an episode like this,” Ker told Decider. “You want every single person to present themselves as suspiciously as possible and have the audience look at every small piece of the puzzle, but ideally not see the full picture until somebody lays it out at the end.”

“When Charlotte told us she was pregnant, we were like, ‘This is amazing because you’re the last character anybody would think would get pregnant in the show,'” Ganz said. “And so actually, that’s the funniest character to write for for that storyline.”

Keep reading for Decider’s full interview with Ganz and Ker regarding “The Villain’s Feast” bombshells, as well as why they changed the episode several times because of their almost-too-excellent cast members…

DECIDER: I’ve got so many questions to ask about Mythic Quest but Megan, I have to start by asking: Is the It’s Always Sunny crew alive and well today? How do you envision Charlie, Mac, Dee, Dennis, and Frank celebrating the Eagles win?

MEGAN GANZ: I was very much texting Rob yesterday and congratulating him even before the final whistle. Their mouths are stained green from various riot punch concoctions that they’ve been drinking. At least one of them is probably in jail for punching a police horse. I don’t know. There’s probably some battery bruises on many of them. One might still be at the top of a street lamp. You know, they probably climbed up that. 

HUMPHREY KER:  I think they’re at the wrong New Orleans. They went to like New Orleans, South Dakota.

Ganz: Or they went into Philly thinking that somehow the Super Bowl is going to be there. Yeah, they’re scattered. Danny [DeVito] probably somehow got into the locker room. Sorry, Frank probably managed to get to the locker room. 

Ker:  And Frank is the person who poisoned the Kansas City Chiefs. 

Ganz: It’s so exciting. 

It’s very exciting. Something that’s equally exciting: this incredible episode of Mythic Quest. I could really feel the murder mystery inspirations there. Talk a little bit about the inspirations that you guys pulled from and where you really got these ideas.

Ganz: Both Humphrey and I are massive Agatha Christie fans. So there was a lot of that in there. We celebrate Christmas with his family in England, and we watch Agatha Christie movies and the old Poirot episodes from ITV pretty much the entire holiday. I’ve also just always been a fan of murder mysteries. When I was younger, I used to read those three-minute mysteries where you’d read them and then you flip the book upside down to guess what happened in the end. 

Ker:  Nancy Drew, too.

Ganz: I read some Nancy Drew and Clue books and I just always really loved it. So this episode kind of also came out of a love of playing Werewolf, which we’ve been playing for quite a while, even before Traitors was a thing. In fact, the Mythic Quest writers’ room played Werewolf a couple of seasons ago just for fun after work one day. And so we were recalling a lot of that when we were breaking this episode. 

Ker: When Megan and I played Werewolf together for the first time, I immediately guessed correctly that she was a werewolf.

Ganz: I hadn’t even said anything. And I got so angry because he just was like, “She’s acting weird, she’s a werewolf.” And I was like, “What is that based on?” And he was right. I literally wouldn’t speak to him on the way home. I was so mad.

Ker: Precisely what a werewolf would do.

The other thing that I love about this episode is that while it does focus heavily on the murder mystery aspect, there’s also this major proposal element to it. It’s almost the chicken or the egg question because you weave them together so seamlessly: did one come before the other? Did you know that you were going to do the proposal first or how did that come together? 

Ganz: No, the proposal came into the episode pretty late in the game. In fact, Ashly Burch was talking about putting it in a different episode and I stole it to put it in this episode when I realized it would help me out of a jam. As we were breaking this episode – and it took a really long time to break – we really wanted to find out the most surprising whodunit, you know? You definitely want that ending where people didn’t see it coming. And so we figured if it was Poppy or Ian or Storm or even maybe like David or Brad, people would be like, “Yeah. I mean, I guess I probably could have guessed that.” So we were looking for a way to really mislead people and throw all of the suspicion on those major characters and hide who was really throwing the party.

Ganz: Kind of what cracks open the episode was when we realized that it was a very expensive party to be throwing. And so one could presume that the host was very rich […] Once we settled upon Dana, I didn’t think people would see it coming that she was the host. We then had to think, “Well, how did she pay for it?” And that’s when we realized maybe the trick was getting everybody else to pay for it but that secretly it was something she wanted to throw for Rachel. Once we got into that space, we were like, “Well, why would she want to throw this big party for Rachel?” And that’s when I stole Ashley’s idea to have them get engaged.

I love the Russian nesting dolls of it in that they’re trying to figure out not only who’s the killer, not only who’s the host, but then also clues are dropping with Poppy, too, for what is unveiled at the end of the episode. Tell me a little bit about how you decided to include that in there.

Ker: It’s great fun weaving all the different elements through an episode like this. Again, going off the basis of Agatha Christie where you want every single person to present themselves as sort of suspiciously as possible and as the audience look at every small piece of the puzzle, but ideally not see the full picture until somebody lays it out at the end. And thanks to thanks to Charlotte’s real-life promiscuity with her husband – a real Hollywood disgrace – we knew that we were going to have to address this at some point. I mean, it’s funny because Meg would often come home from filming the first episodes and go, “Oh my god, you can really see Charlotte is pregnant.”

Ganz: She was like in her third trimester by week two of shooting. And we were like, ” Oh my God.”

Ker: How many people can park melons in front of her?

Ganz: I think for me, the second I see a woman throw up on television, I’m like, “She’s pregnant.”That’s a dead giveaway. So that was actually why I thought really hard to get them on a boat, which was very costly production-wise. Everybody was like, “Can’t you just get rid of the boat? Can’t you just get rid of the boat?” And I was like, “No, because I need her to throw up on a boat or else people are going to immediately see it coming that she’s pregnant.” But being seasick because Poppy eats too much candy — that I don’t think people will see coming.

Ker: We were helped by the fact that Poppy is such a sort of scumbag.

Ganz: Yeah, that’s what we’ve written her as. That’s truly why when Charlotte told us she was pregnant, we were like, “This is amazing because you’re the last character anybody would think would get pregnant in the show.” And so actually, that’s the funniest character to write for for that storyline. It was really fun to leave those things in […] it would have felt, I think, unsatisfying if we had the reveal of the villain and then didn’t have one last great twist at the end. So it just worked perfectly in the episode.

Ker: Also helped by Charlotte’s stupid face.

Ganz: Charlotte’s face at the end makes me laugh so hard. That’s push in on her face at the end, we were actually supposed to cut to these flashbacks of her getting sick on the boat and her smelling the cigars at dinner and this various stuff but I just couldn’t cut away from her stupid face because I thought it was so funny. Plus, she’s like in her third trimester in real life, so it was so funny to watch an actress be like, “Whoa, I might be pregnant” when she’s a month or two away from popping.

Charlotte shines in this episode but so does Jessie [Ennis]. She’s just so good so funny and so crazy. In this episode specifically, how much did you just toss to her as an actor or was there a lot of direction for her in this?

Ganz: I directed her almost not at all. Jesse was the reason we picked Jo [as the game master]. Jesse and Jo’s Venn diagram of personality traits — it’s almost a circle. Jo’s intensity is sort of murderous whereas Jesse’s intensity is just shown through her talent. She really cares about delivering a great performance. And so I knew that I needed somebody that was going to give like the full — you want the Alan Cumming, you want somebody who’s giving it like at 11. And so I was like, “There’s nobody else you can hand it over to other than Jesse.” When Humphrey and I started writing it together, I asked her if she would be up for doing an English accent, and she was immediately in class. She started working with a dialect coach and she was she brought in so many great ideas.

Ker: She was just so amazing.

Ganz: And then that moment of people applauding her was kind of improv because people wanted to applaud at the end of it. And so we thought, it’s funny if just Storm finds it so amazing and everybody else is like, “Yeah, this is just how we roll with this.”

The first four episodes of Mythic Quest are currently streaming on AppleTV+. New episodes drop on Wednesdays.