Are New Girl's Nick and Jess Getting Back Together in Season 5? Liz Meriwether's Answer May Surprise You

Exclusive: Creator Liz Meriwether sounds off on season four's finale, including Coach's exit

Nick and Jess, round two?!

In addition to a surprising and totally perfect proposal, which we're still swooning over, New Girl's season four finale saw two other major happenings on Tuesday night: Coach's (Damon Wayans Jr.) bittersweet exit, as he moved to New York with Mae (Meaghan Rath), and Nick (Jake Johnson) and Jess (Zooey Deschanel) complicated relationship was finally re-addressed via a "sex mug." While the former couple didn't end up hooking up, the door was definitely left open for a potential reunion, as both Nick and Jess admitted they still think of each other in that way.

After chatting with creator Liz Meriwether all about Schmidt and Cece's major finale moment, as well as what's ahead for them in season five, we absolutely needed to know if New Girl was going to go there again with Nick and Jess, seeing as how many fans felt that after two seasons of amazing will-they-or-won't-they build-up, their relationship didn't exactly work so well in season three, leading to a break-up. 

So are they or aren't they? Well, it's complicated. 

E! Online: I have to say, this episode is definitely one of my favorite episodes of the series. Definitely top five right now.  
Liz Meriwether: It's definitely one of my favorites. I was really happy with what we ended up with. It's cool to do a finale where it's almost a bottle episode. Every year we've gone out and it's been a big, production-heavy thing. And this year, it was just our people in the loft and that felt really good, too

The bottle episodes this season have definitely been the strongest.
We had some really bottle episodes this year. That's the good thing that I've learned over the course of the season, too; that's definitely where are strengths are.

For the first time this season really, you guys revisited the idea of Nick and Jess, which I was a little surprised by. Were you at all hesitant to reopen that door after the feedback last season, or did this feel like closure for now?
With Nick and Jess at this point, it's always the conversation of what is the move and what are we doing? For me, I wanted a story that acknowledged that they had gone out, that they had this really important relationship. Just because we didn't tell a lot of stories about that relationship this season doesn't mean that there wasn't that stuff going on with them. They have this complicated relationship and they always will; there's always this grey area between them. What I liked about this story was it didn't end with a cliffhanger. It didn't end with like, what's going to happen immediately in season five? It just acknowledged that they have a complicated friendship and love of each other that needs to be resolved, but won't be resolved immediately, which is where I want to set the show up for season five. It's not something that we jump into immediately, but it is something I want to explore again in season five. I was happy to go back there, but I was also really happy to not tell those stories this season. I felt like we really needed to get away from it and remind the audience that they had a lot of other things going on in their lives. And hopefully in season five, we can go back there on some level in a new way. 

So will either of them get a major love interest next season?
I don't actually know, to be honest. We haven't really gone into breaking season five yet, beyond the first four episodes. That's up in the air.

I guess I was in the minority, but I actually really liked Nick and Jess when they were a couple. 
I did, too! [Laughs.]

But do you guys have conversations in the writers' room about what you would do differently if they were to become a couple again?
We haven't had that conversation in the room, but we do always have conversations about their relationship and as writers and as an audience, what do we want to see and what feels real. It's definitely a big topic of conversation in the writers' room. I love them together, too, and for me, their relationship was always the central relationship of the show. When I was writing the pilot that was for me the central relationship. There's never a world where whatever is going on between them completely goes away. I think it will just be figuring out how we want do it. 

This episode also served as Damon Wayans Jr.'s exit from the show. When he signed on to be a regular for season four, did you know he would be leaving at the end of the season?
No, I think we found out in the middle of this year. He's amazing. He's such a fantastic actor and I am so sorry to see him ago. It was so fun to have him on the show and I'm so glad I got to work with him. The good thing about our cast it they're all so amazing, so having already shot the first four episodes of season five, even one episode without Zooey, even just the four of them, it's still really amazing to watch. I'm really sorry to see Damon go, but only having five regulars kind of allows us  to have a little bit more time to get into each of their characters. 

I don't know how long the engagement will be, but as he's leaving, Jess says they'll all see Coach at the wedding. So it's safe to say we could see Coach come back and visit in the future?
Yeah, definitely. Definitely.

I thought Coach's arc was really great this season, too, with him beginning the season as this player and ending it moving across the country to be with the woman he loves.
I knew I wanted him to leave because of a girl. We established that he left the first time because of a girl, so I felt like that had a nice full-circle feel to it. It actually worked out—him leaving—because it felt like it allowed us to have his character build toward something and grow. And I think it really helped the second half of the season because we had this endpoint in mind. It was really satisfying to see him grow.