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CAUTION – the below includes spoilers for Wednesday’s all-new episode of Major Crimes. Do not read if you have not yet seen the episode and don’t want to be spoiled!

Major Crimes is always full of twists and turns, and tonight’s winter premiere is no exception, with two particularly shocking moments towards the end of the episode. We wanted to find out just how those moments came to pass, so we checked in with creator James Duff for the scoop.

MajorCrimesTV: So, this episode was full of shocking moments, but first, let’s talk about Sharon getting punched, because I was NOT ready for that!

James Duff: Sharon was just trying to find a reason to hold her suspect and she put her face in the line of fire. You see our characters running towards the danger at the top of the episode, and then you see Sharon walking in and putting herself in the line of danger in the interview room. It’s actually a parallel to that moment in the beginning. It’s a dramatization of her putting herself first – she is trying to find a way to stop this guy. And the way to stop him is to get him to assault her. And she succeeds. That was her strategy to resolve this case.

MCTV: Well, it sure got me – I wasn’t expecting it at all, and it looked very real.

JD: It got me, too, even though we wrote it and knew it was happening, when I saw them on screen I gasped. And Mary was fantastic in that scene. It’s very unnerving.

MCTV: The other big bombshell at the end of this episode is that Stroh may be back. How is that going to play into the rest of this season?

JD: Well, we’re going to get more information as we go along about Stroh, but I’m not going to be able to tell that story–remember when I was doing these last eight episodes, I didn’t know whether or not we would have a season six, and so I put all the Stroh information where I could excise it if I needed to. And I made it small, so I could track his potential return without promising to actually show anything.

Indeed, if he has come back, he would be very careful. I mean, he’s on the ten most wanted list, he is a serious, serious criminal, people seriously want to catch him. He’s the subject of a world-wide manhunt. So how he may be accomplishing these things is questionable. He may not be here in person. We know he has a history of manipulating people into helping him. I’m not really going to pay off the story in the back eight, but I’m going to continue setting it up, because I am going to go there next year.

Major Crimes returns with an all-new episode next Wednesday at 9pm/8c on TNT. Don’t forget to check out the “What Would Sharon Raydor Do?” podcast tomorrow, where we talk about this episode (and that scene!) in depth with Captain Raydor herself, Mary McDonnell.