Alias Oral History: Jennifer Garner, Series Creator J.J. Abrams And Cast Mark Spy Drama's 10th Anniversary

Here's a fact that'll burst your giant, red ball: Alias' series finale aired 10 years ago this month. That means it's been a decade since we last watched Sydney Bristow go about the business of being a graduate student by day, spy extraordinaire by night... and also sometimes by day. Man, that beeper went off a lot, didn't it?

Alias was a coming-of-age story of a kind, a slick, sexy, action-filled drama in which Sydney constantly struggled to discern truth from the insanity around her. Syd started the series thinking her father didn't care about her, her mother was long dead and her future involved becoming Mrs. Danny Hecht. (RIP.) She ended it as a wife, mother and semi-retired covert operative who'd endured terrible loss and witnessed unbelievable events, but still was able to stroll the beach with the family she'd worked hard to create, satisfied with what she'd been able to accomplish in the world.

Alias also was the vehicle via which Jennifer Garner, whose biggest prior credit was a recurring role on The WB's Felicity, became a bona-fide star. The speed with which her fame grew during the show's tenure was matched only by that of its creator, a pre-Lost J.J. Abrams, whom the world was just beginning to notice as Sydney dyed her hair bright red and invited us along on a mission.

The ABC drama's five-season run ended on May 22, 2006. And because we miss it with the intensity of Arvin Sloane searching for The Passenger, we talked with the series' cast and key behind-the-scenes players for a look back on how Syd's world came to be.

In the oral history below, Garner, Abrams, Michael Vartan, Victor Garber and more shared their lasting memories about the spy-tastic series. Because they had so many good stories, it's long — like, Tolstoy-long — but if you're a true fan of the show, we think you'll be happy to make like Sydney on her comm link and say: "I'm in."

GETTING STARTED

One day during production of his WB series, Felicity, Abrams started to wonder what it would be like if the drama's title character had a secret life as a kickass spy. The seeds of Alias were sown.

ABRAMS | When I was writing the pilot, having worked with Jen on Felicity, she was in my mind as a very strong contender for the role. My wife, Katie, said, "You have to write something for Jen." And so Jen kept coming up in my mind as a potential candidate for this. And no one else did. But I was trying not to think of Jen because I wanted Sydney to be her own thing that then Jen could bring to life, or whomever. But there was no one else I really considered but her.

JEFF PINKNER, executive producer | J.J. had done Felicity, but he wasn't "J.J. Abrams" yet. He was this young, hotshot, superstar writer, and Felicity was a popular show but not a cultural phenomenon, other than the cutting of the hair moment... But I saw the show, and it spoke to everything that I loved.

GARNER | I was in the movie theater watching Traffic with my phone in my hand, which is very typical for an actor waiting to hear about a job. You can't bear it. You're just dying for that piece of news. I don't think there'd been anything that I ever wanted this badly or worked so hard to get.

So I was in the middle of the movie, and my phone started to ring and I dodged outside. It was finally, finally mine and I just remember watching the rest of Traffic like it was a romantic comedy. [Laughs] I was kind of levitating above the rest of the seats in the theater. And so freaked out.

PINKNER | J.J. had to fight to have her cast in the lead. ABC at the time was not interested. She had played a very small role in Felicity as a much different sort of girl who's awkward in her own skin. So J.J. fought for her. I think she blew everyone away with her dedication.

GARNER | The great thing about J.J. is that he pulls you into a fight like that. I was his team member in it... I had an idea at least of what I was up against.

VICTOR GARBER, played Jack Bristow | I was surprised that J.J. or that anybody saw me as Jack Bristow. I was convinced that the guy who went in ahead of me was going to get the part, because he looked exactly like I thought that Jack Bristow should look. I said, "Why am I here? This guy is perfect..." I was stunned to get it, frankly. Very happy.

KEVIN WEISMAN, played Marshall Flinkman | I was 29 at the time, and Marshall was described as mid-40s, overweight, balding with a ponytail and a Mötley Crüe T-shirt. And I was like, "What? I just worked with J.J. [on Felicity]. Are you sure they want to see me?" ...And so, we tried it a bunch of different ways. I tried Marshall super confident and then super laid back, cocky, highly intelligent... I never told [Abrams] 'til years later. I was like, "You know, I kind of based it on you."

MICHAEL VARTAN, played Michael Vaughn | We do the first read — I can't remember if you read for the network first or the studio first — and I was sweating profusely. I mean, it was embarrassing. I said, "J.J., I can't do this." He was like, "Yes, you can."

[After a second reading went much better], I still didn't think I'd get the job. It's funny, because after we read, Bradley [Cooper] and I were just hanging out outside. We looked at each other and we were like, "Dude, we're not both getting this part." ...Lo and behold, we both got the job.

PINKNER | I was hired to the original staff by J.J. When I walked out of my interview, [producers] Bob Orci and Alex Kurtzman were waiting to go into theirs. On that first staff was me, Bob and Alex, Jesse Alexander. Jesse and I were the only two people from gate to gate, from wire to wire.

VARTAN | I never tested with Jen... I was convinced there would be some sort of chemistry read at least... but it worked out — and by the way, I challenge a paper bag to not have chemistry with Jennifer Garner. [Laughs] ...By like Episode 3 or 4 of Season 1, we started having a sense that there's definitely going to be some chemistry between these characters down the road.

THE PILOT

The Touchstone Television-produced potential series' initial hour, "Truth Be Told," was shot in Los Angeles. Abrams directed.

GARNER | I might have just about lost the job in the middle of the pilot. One day, [Abrams] said to me, when we had been shooting a couple of days, "Meet me at the Chateau Marmont and let's have a cup of coffee." Which was so weird. I lived down the road from J.J. I have forever. I don't need to go anywhere to meet him. I know him. So it was really serious. We had a real conversation where he said, "There are times when you really drop into the character, and there are times where..." basically that I wasn't hitting it right. I don't know if he was just trying to just encourage me to take it more seriously. Maybe I was having too much fun. I'm not sure. But I do know that after that, we went a little deeper, and we went after it a little [more]. I guess it worked, because I didn't get fired.

GARBER | I don't think I've read a pilot that good since then. The script I read that was as good as that was Argo.

GARNER | Getting to work with J.J. towards the beginning of his career was just a great gift ... But he's not J.J. by accident. He is the most inclusive, team-building, collaborative person... He makes everyone on the set feel absolutely important to the fun of the set, to the fun of the day, to the work at hand. And I've really been lucky enough to carry that with me into everything else that I've had the privilege to do.

PHOTOS The Top 10 Alias Episodes

SEASON 1

ABC greenlights Alias. The premiere airs Sunday, Sept. 30, 2001. The production schedule is tough for everyone involved, and Garner's day-to-day work is particularly grueling, but the mood on set tends toward a fun sense of teamwork.

 GARNER | One of the best things about that show specifically was that I was surrounded by these actors whom I revered. I mean, when I lived in New York in my early 20s, I saw four different shows starring Victor Garber. And not only did I see them, I stood in the back and paid Standing Room Only ticket prices, because I couldn't afford to sit down. So for me, working with Victor was the highlight of anything that I'd done so far.

At the time I did the pilot, I think I was 28. So I wasn't a little kid. I was old enough to know that I was lucky to be working with these actors from the theater world whom I looked up to so much. That, to me, set the tone.

RELATED Why Jennifer Garner Needs to Come Back to Series TV — ASAP

PINKNER | Because we had Ron Rifkin [who played Arvin Sloane] and Victor Garber, who were unbelievable pros, they from the beginning took her under their collective wing, by osmosis and also certainly in some cases by their own behavior — like "this is the way to be a professional." Then she, by force of will, created this family that went across the entire staff.

GARBER | It's something that I just instinctively do, as I'm very controlling. [Laughs] Listen, of course I took Jennifer under my wing. I was playing her father, and also because we had this kind of extraordinary connection right from day one and we still do.

GARNER | I really didn't [have a life]. And that's what it required. My weeks...it sounds like a joke... When you talk about an 18-hour day, you really are going in at 5 in the morning and you really are coming out in the, you know, close to midnight. It really is that long of a day.

Often, I would start with the first unit and overlap in the middle of the day and be working on two units and then I would finish with the second unit. So the crew had gone home because of their overtime... and I would stay put and do both. And then go home and learn eight pages and get up and work out and do it all again.

KEN OLIN, executive producer | The worst thing Jen would ever do is just after working 14 or 15 hours, she would get cranky and she would say, "I'm getting cranky..." She would never ever act out in a way that was unfair or irrational, blaming people. Never.

GARNER | I remember, I was getting out of shape because I never had time to work out... We were starting at 5 a.m. or something, and I said [to Carl Lumbly, who played Marcus Dixon], "I didn't get to work out. I don't know what I'm going to do. I feel like my body's going to change, and I won't be able to do the fights." And he said, "Well, I went for a run this morning." I said, "What are you talking about? We started at 5!" He said, "Jennifer, I ran at 4." He said, "You can always get up earlier. You can always do half an hour, always."

And when they talk about, "Oh, Jen worked out at [an ungodly hour]," it started that day. Because I felt like if Carl can do it... Of course, he's right. You just have to dig deeper. You have to have more discipline. And I did. I did absolutely work out at whatever time was required so I could show up warmed up and ready.

PHOTOS Suits' Gina Torres Reminisces About Roles on Firefly, Alias, Angel and More

CARL LUMBLY, played Marcus Dixon | With everything that she had to do on that show, the thing I regarded her for most was she kept her balance. She kept composure.

VARTAN | We'd shoot eight or nine days for each episode. At least two or three of those days were nights, because to make the Disney lot or downtown Burbank look like Algeria or eastern Bulgaria, you've got to shoot at night... A lot of our night shoots were in San Pedro, at the docks there. You're driving home on a Friday morning at 7:30 after a 14-hour day and you're in bumper-to-bumper traffic. People are going to work and you have to be back on set at 5 pm for another night shoot and you're just exhausted.

OLIN | It was a good feeling to be exhausted, and we were really exhausted a lot.

As a result of the long hours, the cast and crew grew very close.

VARTAN | The first season, we watched the show together at everyone's rotating house and just had a little party. It was one of those incredible experiences where the people you work with are amazing actors, but even better people. It was amazing. To this day, Victor and I are incredibly close.

PHOTOS Alias and 24 Other Shows You Want Remade or Revived Now!

 GARBER | Bradley would come over to our house all the time and eat. I was living there with Rainer [Andreesen], who I'm now married to, and at that time, we had a house near Hancock Park. There were a lot of gatherings. Ron Rifkin and Iva, his wife, we're very close to them. Michael Vartan, Ken Olin and his wife Patty Wettig, we loved to hang out, and J.J. and Katie, too... We liked being with each other. It was just one of those things that doesn't happen. It hasn't happened to me before or since.

RON RIFKIN, played Arvin Sloane | I was closest with Victor, Jennifer and Bradley. But then Bradley left, I guess, in the second year... We're still close. Then Victor and Vartan were very close... And Carl Lumbly is a prince.

GARBER | There was one time where Ken Olin sent Jennifer and I to our trailers because we couldn't stop laughing.

OLIN | The two of them were goofballs. If the absurdity of a situation suddenly struck one of them, the other — almost through osmosis — instantly broke up, and we were done for.

GARBER | Jen and I had this thing where we would be OK if the scene would start and we were just standing there, but if we had to walk toward each other for some reason, we kept saying to Kenny, "Just please don't make us walk toward each other, because we can't do it." [Laughs]

MERRIN DUNGEY, played Francie Calfo | It was just exciting to experience this with such a lovely group of people.

LUMBLY | We operated much more like a theater company. In that regard, it was much more about what was the task at hand, what was the play that day. I tend to be pretty collegial, and I like people who come to work to make it right. So I felt great about everybody.

VARTAN | I've been in this business for 30 years. It was, hands down, the greatest human experience I've had in the business by far.

The series introduced the idea of Milo Rambaldi, a 15th-century prophet interested in immortality, in the pilot. The Rambaldi mythology, with its mystifying twists and turns, would continue throughout the series.

ABRAMS | You always have ideas of where you would like it to go. And [the Rambaldi plot] was something I wanted to do from the very beginning. I purposely, in the pilot, didn't have her stealing a disc or a computer chip or a data device, because I didn't want it to be just that. I wanted it to be this strange object that you didn't quite understand. So this thing, the Mueller Device, this weird floating red ball, was the beginning of something that said the show was going to go into areas that would be as much sci-fi as spy. And that horrible "spyfy" moniker got attached to it because of that.

PINKNER | There was definitely a time somewhere around the middle of the show where the mythology of the Rambaldi device and the plot mechanics started to overwhelm the character telling. We identified that and course-corrected and made the last season-and-a-half, two seasons back to what the bulk of the story was about: emotion and character, with the plot servicing that rather than the other way around.

JOSH APPELBAUM, co-executive producer | Are you asking me did I have a handle on it, or did the rest of the world? Because they understood it better than I did. I'm only half kidding.

GARNER | [Laughs] Victor had no handle on it. Sometimes I could piece together a bit of the Rambaldi plot. Sometimes I was pretty fluent in it, but definitely a lot of the time, it went over my head.

GARBER | I had no idea what was going on, but I'm doing a show now [DC's Legends of Tomorrow] that I have no idea what's going on. [Laughs] I'm not very smart.

GARNER | [Ron] couldn't [keep track of it]. He really couldn't. He was so good at saying it, though.

RIFKIN | No f–king handle on it at all... Then poor Mia Maestro [as Nadia]... She had to fall through that glass floor. Oh, it was just terrible.

ABRAMS | But I liked the idea that there was this story — not just with the mystery of Rambaldi, but the mystery of the Alliance of 12, the idea that SD-6 was part of this larger scheme. There was that map – I actually have a copy of it – that Vaughn shows to Sydney in the second episode that made you realize how confusing it is. It was all about just how impossible it is to comprehend, which was sort of the fun of the show. It was never about a particular storyline from the beginning. It was showing how confused she had to be. We had ideas where it was going to go, but nothing that was in any way written in stone. The better idea wins. And you never have the better idea at the very beginning.

WEISMAN | I'm going to go with yes. I got it. Of course I got it. I'm f–king Marshall, of course I got it and it was awesome. My favorite thing was the big red ball. The big red ball was kickass.

VARTAN | If I'm going to be honest, I had no idea what the hell was going on.

DAVID ANDERS, played Julian Sark | Yeah, it was pretty high science fiction. The red ball, and I don't know, there was a device that incinerated a bunch of people in a church or something like that? I'm trying to recollect. I mean, there's so much that I forget.

VARTAN | There were definitely times during the show when we were just saying our lines, just trying to be believable, but deep down inside had no idea what we were walking about.

ANDERS | I revisited it a little bit on Netflix, and I was shocked about the Rambaldi stuff that I had forgotten. I was happy to see that the show itself holds up later.

LUMBLY | I rather appreciated the fact that the whole show at times felt kind of non-linear. It felt like even though it was chaotic, it seemed like there must be some invisible order to it that we just couldn't pierce, and that's what's compelling to me.

GREG GRUNBERG, played Eric Weiss | I didn't understand any of it. I still don't. I don't get it.

SEASON 2The first season — for which Garner won a Golden Globe — ended with Sydney facing her presumed-dead mother, who was actually a former KGB operative named Irina Derevko. Mama Bristow would be played by Lena Olin, starting in Season 2.

GARBER | She was what they call a "get," you know. I mean, getting Lena Olin on a series was like, "Are you kidding?" It was like royalty stepped on the set. She was just the most, and still is, one of the most beautiful women.

Meanwhile, Dungey was about to shed one character — Sydney's roommate Francie — in order to take on another: Allison Doren, the evil Project Helix clone who looked just like Francie.

DUNGEY | J.J. came up to me at the upfronts, at the end of Season 1, in New York... He was like, "Do you know how to fight?" I was like, "No." He's like, "Learn."

In 2002, ABC broadcast the Super Bowl, and Alias landed the coveted post-Super Bowl spot. The episode featured the end of SD-6, a first kiss for Sydney and Vaughn and a memorable op in which Ms. Bristow was required to wear black, then red lingerie.

GARNER | All I know is at the time, I was such a baby about any time I had to take any article of clothing off... Looking back 10 years later, I wish that I had just been pretty much naked for five straight years. [Laughs] It's like, I will never look like that again! [Laughs] But yes, the lingerie, I would have to say, that was fun. It was really fun. It's hard to do a fight in lingerie, though, for the record.

Thanks to an exceedingly long Super Bowl post-show, the episode didn't air until very late that evening — and the ratings reflected the delay: 17.4 million total viewers and an 8.2 demo rating. For context, CBS' Survivor had nabbed 45.4 million viewers and a 21.8 two years prior.

VARTAN | Our episode I don't think aired until like 11:30 on the West Coast, and everyone was in bed by then. They'd been watching football for six hours, so our numbers were a little better than they had been, but certainly not what the studio expected unfortunately.

PINKNER | We never felt threatened that the show was in danger of getting canceled, because there was so much support internally at ABC. It's not as if the numbers didn't matter, but nobody came in the day after a show and was desperate to see the numbers.

VARTAN | You had Jennifer in lingerie. That should have been enough right there, especially for the male audience watching the Super Bowl. [Laughs] That should have been a slam dunk.

PINKNER | We were always in a panic of "It's not good enough," but it wasn't about the numbers. It was about the standards that we were setting for ourselves.

In the Season 2 finale, "The Telling," Sydney realized she's been living with Francie's clone. The two women then had a house-destroying fight that left Sydney unconscious. The scenes were shot at the very end of the production season.

DUNGEY | You know, there's not a week that goes by that somebody doesn't talk about Alias or say something to me like, "Francie doesn't like coffee ice cream."

GARNER | My overarching memory was that J.J. was directing it, and that it was one of those moments where he had wanted to do a fight so badly for so long. He was so happy, and [Dungey and I] were so happy to be fighting each other. It was an interesting time to end the season. It was just so right. And it was my birthday.

DUNGEY | It was Jen's birthday. They brought in this tower of sticky buns, and everyone was eating sticky buns.

GARNER | I remember my stunt double, Shauna, taking a big hit. I think she had to jump over a countertop and land on her back. She giggled — and whenever she giggled at the end of a take, I knew she was hurt. And so I just remembered everyone laughing because she was laughing, and me having this sick spike of fear in my chest, because I can't bear for Shauna to be hurt. But it was a walk-it-off kind of a hurt. She's so tough.

SHAUNA DUGGINS, Jennifer Garner's stunt double | I remember going over that counter and hitting the ground. That was a really hard hit.

DUNGEY | We rehearsed a lot... It was so choreographed, and the fight was actually a hell of a lot longer. We had to cut some of it. There was a whole thing where I was like going to be on a harness and do a flying — I can't remember what it's called — but this like flying kick to her chest, and we had to cut it [for time]. I mean each day when we shot it was a 16- or 17-hour day.

DUGGINS | It was typical J.J. style, which I love. He wants to use the environment. He wants it real and messy and Sydney-style...The fight made its way through the house and didn't leave much untouched.

GARNER | I remember somebody saying, "It's lunch on the last day. We're almost there!" And I started to cry, [Laughs] because I said, "We're never going to get there!"

DUNGEY | We had to destroy the house in order... Everyone was so excited. It was so amazing, and then when they were like putting the squibs on me, I was like, "Why is it near my heart? Am I dying?" They didn't say like, "That's a wrap on Francie!" — and it wasn't — but I was worried. There were a lot of tears.

The final moments of Season 2 found Sydney waking up in Hong Kong and getting a visit from Vaughn, who informed her she'd been missing and thought dead for two years... and in that time, he'd gotten married.

GARNER | I could cry thinking about it. I cried so much for her during those first episodes of that season... Only J.J. would think that kind of thing up. He's so clever, and it was such a great idea, and it gave us so much to play. It did spin us all in a whole different and new direction, which was perfect. But I remember: If you were gutted, I can't even tell you, it was like it was happening [to me].

VARTAN | I thought it was great. You know, so many unanswered questions. It lent itself to so many diverse and vast storylines. We didn't know what direction J.J. was going to take it, in but I thought that episode — that scene when I find her again after two years in some downtown Hong Kong apartment and now I'm married to another woman — was one of the most emotional scenes I shot on the show. Ken Olin directed that episode, and it was really, really heavy. For a minute there, you stopped feeling like you were making a TV show. It felt like we were shooting Sophie's Choice or something.

PINKNER | The most internally controversial [storyline decision] was what to make of the two years that Sydney was missing, and J.J.'s decision was to keep the story alive and she had been doing operations in disguise and she didn't remember

SEASON 3

The drama moved to a more episodic format in its third season. Bradley Cooper and Merrin Dungey exited the series; Mia Maestro (as Sydney's half-sister, Nadia Santos) and Melissa George (as Vaughn's new wife/secret double agent Lauren Reed) joined the cast. By that point, Garner and Vartan had briefly dated but were no longer together, and Abrams was less involved in Alias' day-to-day operations as he focused on his upcoming series, Lost.

ABRAMS | The first two seasons were what I wanted the show to be. And then [ABC] said in Season 2, "This is the last season you can make it serialized. It has to be a standalone show." And so Season 3 began the season where it was episode-to-episode.

PINKNER | At the end of Season Two, Bob [Orci] and Alex [Kurtzman] were leaving, Josh [Appelman] and André [Nemec] joined. [Producers] Alison Schapker and Monica Breen joined right around the same time. All those people have gone on to phenomenal careers. Rick Orci, Bob's younger brother, joined at a certain point. [Producer] Drew Goddard came in for the last two seasons. But I ended up running the show in the last couple years.

APPELBAUM | It was always about the saga of Sydney Bristow, the whole world that was created. I think in a nice way, what that mandate forced us to do was to tell standalone stories within the mythology. There's always the mythology going, but it was nice to feel like to some extent each episode had its own individual satisfaction and the show wasn't just this one long run-on sentence.

 GARNER | I preferred the more serialized version. Now, people would binge-watch it, and that would be OK. J.J. was... ahead of his time in some ways.

Cooper left after the season's 10th episode, in which Will — now in witness protection — kills Allison Doren. Though Cooper declined to be interviewed for this piece, in 2013 he told GQ he wanted to "f—king kill myself" while on the show and that he asked to leave before Abrams could fire him.

ABRAMS | I think that's right, only in that we weren't coming up with things that were worthy of him, and he was sitting around in many episodes doing very little. It felt like that kind of relationship where you both love each other, but you both realize for various righteous reasons that it's not quite working out. And you both come to a meeting with the same intention. That's sort of what happened. It was very hard to go back to the domestic stories when there is a nuke in Los Angeles somewhere. It was a really tricky plate to spin.

GARBER | Bradley is one of the most talented people I've ever known, and we all knew — I knew, certainly — that he was going to go on to do great things. The role just wasn't very challenging for him, and I think they didn't actually know what to do with the role, to be fair.... It was all very amicable and yes, we talked about it a lot. I mean, I didn't want him to leave, because I loved him. But of course, it was the right decision.

ABRAMS | It was more an issue of the paradigm of the show than anything else.

After Dungey's departure, she'd show up one more time, as Francie in a flashback during the series finale.

DUNGEY | My greatest, not regret, but disappointment, I guess, is I feel like the Allison Doren storyline never... I'd rather you sew it up completely... It was great to come back for two of those episodes in Season 3, but I still feel like, "Is she dead? Did she die? Like, what happened?" ...I think that there could have been other ways in which Allison Doren could have been used.

While we're on the topic of alternative storylines, Anders recalls discussion of a potential Sydney-Sark romantic plot.

ANDERS | I was told that that was the initial plan for them, to have them hookup at some point, but that just never happened.

APPLEBAUM | We were playing with the idea in our minds, figuratively speaking, and I think we were like, "Sydney would never sleep with that a–hole. She's too smart and cool to fall for that guy's s–t." I think we may have walked up to the line, because it certainly was a provocative idea, but yeah. For Sydney's sake we couldn't go there, because I don't think she would go there. [Laughs]

ANDRÉ NEMEC, co-executive producer | When [Appelbaum and I] came onto that show, we walked right into a very well-oiled machine of smart people doing smart work... J.J. used to use the phrase... "What is this particular writer's super power? Are they great at story? Are they great at character? Are they great at set pieces? What is the element that they bring in a great way in the show?" And you know, it was like the Justice League.

APPELBAUM | I don't remember who it was — it probably was J.J. — but somebody said, "What if Sydney had a sister?" Suddenly everyone's like "F–k yeah!"...Then J.J. was going through a script... and in his rewrite of it, as this guy is dying, [Abrams] added this line in. The person dying said, "Find the passenger." We in the writers' room were like, "Who's the passenger?" J.J's like, "I don't know. It's sort of an interesting idea. Let's talk about it." It just felt like a compelling thing. By the end of the day, it was like, "Wait a minute: What if the passenger is Sydney's sister?" Tie those two ideas together and that sort of took root, and it was game on.

SEASON 4

ABC moves its struggling spy drama from Sundays at 9/8c to Wednesdays at 9, following Lost. Sydney & Co. join a black ops division of the CIA called Authorized Personnel Only — run by Sloane — in the season premiere; the rest of the season unfolds in a manner both sublime (Sydney and Vaughn get engaged) and sometimes silly (Arvin Clone).

GARNER | One day, I found myself as a vampire. And I thought, why am I a vampire? Where has the mythology taken us? How have we come to this? [Laughs]

GARBER | I was on board with anything. Except, yeah, I think we had vampires one episode and thought we had jumped the shark then.

VARTAN | Victor and I joked about it... There was a scene where we jump over a Russian city, and there's a huge red ball hovering over us. We looked at each other and said, "Dude, we didn't jump the red ball. We just jumped the shark." [Laughs]

GARBER | But then what happened was, the show, like most shows, it goes in peaks and valleys, and it came back strongly.

NEMEC | The best days in that writing room was when J.J. did come in. I mean, even if he blew something up beyond comprehension, and three weeks' worth of work went into the toilet, the spirit of J.J. always prevailed over that show, and there was always an effort. It's part of what you do on a writing staff, which is to capture the spirit of the creation of that show. So even in the days when J.J. wasn't there, J.J. was there. We never lived in a landscape of trying to figure out how to please J.J. "How do we come up with something that J.J. won't blow up?" It was never about that.

In season finale cliffhanger, Vaughn and Sydney's car was involved in a terrible wreck... right after he told her "For starters, my name is not Michael Vaughn."

VARTAN | I didn't know I was coming back at the time. I didn't even know that my death was going to be faked for a while, to be honest with you. I don't know if J.J. withheld that information on purpose. If he did, that was very shrewd and clever of him.

APPELBAUM | We're all sitting in the writer's room and the door comes open. It's Jen standing there with the script and she's like, "Seriously guys? 'My name is not Michael Vaughn?!' What are you talking about?" And we're like, surprise! Because nobody had prepped her for it.

VARTAN | That accident was pretty violent. I remember seeing the dailies and I was like, "Holy s—t, how did they do that?" That was really intense. It was really jarring.

OLIN | I think honestly what happened was in the fourth year at some point, part of the evolution was as much as all the personal stories and stuff were such a unique underpinning and character-y, the problem was that that stuff, you know, the Felicity stuff, being with [Syd's] friends and the whole thing, it couldn't really compete energy-wise. That didn't get really figured out.

I think it got harder to sustain those things, and I don't know that everybody was putting in as much effort to balance those things, and then once it became all about the gimmicks and the plot twists, you begin to feel like, OK, everybody's running out of steam here.

SEASON 5

The season, with Garner's real-life pregnancy written into the script, began in September 2005. Much of the action centered on Sydney's imminent motherhood coinciding with Vaughn's abduction and subsequent death — which turned out not to be the real thing. Balthazar Getty and Rachel Nichols joined the cast as Thomas Grace and Rachel Gibson, new APO recruits. ABC eventually trimmed the season's episode order, and the series was cancelled just before Thanksgiving. The season finale gave Sydney a happy ending, living in a house on the beach with Vaughn and their two children.

GARNER | They were all so kind to me about [being pregnant]. They were so nice. But then you can't do the fights and it's a different animal. It wasn't the same thing.

NEMEC | It just started to feel to us like we were nearing the end of what that story sort of needed to and wanted to be.

APPELBAUM | [Adding Getty and Nichols to the cast] was an effort to sell the idea of this sort of next generation of the show, knowing that 22 episodes of what Jen was doing was so beyond.

PINKNER | Typically by the fifth season of a show, No. 1 on the call sheet is the last one to show up and the first one to leave. But Jennifer instituted a Crew Member of the Week award and created a little crown, which went from crew member to crew member each week, and there was a ceremony. There was one particular AD [Richard Coad] who everyone loved, and when it was finally his time  — he was from Hawaii — she had rented hula dancers and everybody marched en masse to a soundstage, the doors opened and the hula dancers came out on a float... all of which she paid for out of her own pocket.

APPELBAUM | I think in the back of our minds we always knew that without Jen, there's no Alias, period.

As the series wound down, it celebrated its 100th episode, "There's Only One Sydney Bristow," and witnessed the deaths of a few key characters.

PINKNER | When it came time to do the 100th episode, we designed it as a love letter to Sydney. It became clear as we started talking about it that it wouldn't really feel complete unless Bradley/Will was in it. We reached out to him and asked him to come. He had a big life and a big career at that point, and he very graciously and happily came back to do the episode.

APPELBAUM | Sloane clearly needed to have the greatest comeuppance of them all. When we said, "Well wait, what if what he's wanted all along — he gets it, and it gives him eternal life, but he has to spend it in this pit somewhere trapped forever? Literally what could be worse?"

RIFKIN | Oh, my god, it was awful. Awful. He's there for eternity. People stop me and say, "Oh man, you really got stuck, didn't you?"

GARBER | Every scene with Jennifer was pretty special for me. The hard one was when I was dying, and it was the last scene. The show was over, and that was very difficult for both or us, particularly for her. She was a mess.

PINKNER | I think we all knew from the beginning that at a certain point, it was a story that would end and had to end. And then the specifics of how it was going to end were sort of dictated by larger business decisions and Jennifer, where she was in her life. But I think the five seasons felt like a really natural, appropriate amount of time.

VARTAN | When that show wrapped, the final shot of the final episode... I saw guys who were tough as nails, dolly grips and lighting guys, everyone was just bawling. The goodbyes lasted three hours.

GRUNBERG | I like to take something from every show. Bradley Cooper's character, Will, had a '69 Ford Bronco, that was his car on the show, and I bought that car. I still have that car. It's in my garage right now.

LUMBLY | It was about so much other than the chases and the searches and the technology and the frames and the jumping and the running. It was really about people trying to help one another get home at night, and imagining that they were trying to do that for a lot of people that they didn't know and see. That level of compassion — I felt good being a part of that.

GARBER | The thing about Alias was that it wasn't as big a hit, I think, as people think it was.

GARNER | But people who loved it really loved it. Still, after all this time, nothing makes me happier than if somebody says, "I really was an Alias fan." And I can tell if they really mean it. It just means the world to me.

GARBER | It did have a very avid following, and the fact that it was on five years was pretty impressive, given the fact that the ratings weren't ever all that great.

GARNER | I mean, people who have Rambaldi tattoos? That's so awesome.

GARBER | I was just grateful that we got to do it for that long.

APPLEBAUM | Working on the show was like the show itself: It was incredibly exciting. Sometimes you felt like the rug was getting pulled out from under you but then wherever you would land afterwards, you were always happy for having taken the fall.

VARTAN | The camaraderie was a level of which I've never experienced since.

GARNER | Tell everybody that you talk to: It's time to get together for our barbecue on our 10-year anniversary. I will host.

Do you have fond memories of Alias? Share them with us in the comments!