‘Emily in Paris’ Creator Darren Star Answers Every Burning Question You Have After Watching Season 5 (Exclusive)

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Emily in Paris season 5

Emily Cooper is so back! The fifth season of the Netflix hit premiered on Dec. 18 and brought back everything fans love: high-fashion, big drama and lots of romance.

While Emily (played by Lily Collins) goes through many ups and downs (what else is new?) she has a few new adventures along the way. The season kicks off where the last one ended — with Emily in Rome dating her dreamy Italian boyfriend Marcello Muratori (Eugenio Franceschini), the heir to his family’s luxury cashmere brand. Emily’s tasked at running the marketing firm Agence Grateau’s new office in Rome, but things don’t get off to a smooth start.

After failing to score enough Italian business (despite Princess Jane’s help, played by the iconic Minnie Driver), Emily and her colleagues (Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, Samuel Arnold and Bruno Gouery) head back to Paris to do damage control on the brands they do represent.

Throughout the season, Emily and Marcello reconnect a few times, and eventually end up working together on a project that takes them to Venice, Italy. While on the romantic excursion, Emily has to decide whether staying with Marcello and working for his brand is what she really wants… or if she’s ready to get back to the life she built in Paris. (I’ll let you guess which one she chooses.)

Ahead of the premiere, PEOPLE sat down with creator, executive producer and writer Darren Star (the man who brought you Sex and the City and Younger to name just a few of his hits), to ask him our burning questions about season 5.

While it’s unclear if our favorite American expat will return to Paris for a sixth season, Star tells PEOPLE he wrote plenty of cliffhangers to compel Netflix to bring it back (and we thank him for that).

What made you decide to take the cast to Venice this season?

Darren Star: We definitely were going to be in Italy this season, the storyline took us to Italy. We knew we were going to be in Rome… and given a second location in Italy, it really felt like, to me, Venice was such a magical place. If I could bring the audience anywhere, I wanted to bring them to Venice, because it blew me away from the moment I first set eyes on Venice. I was like, ‘Wow,’ and there’s something so cinematic about it.

How did you decide on casting the new guest stars?

DS: For me, it starts with a character, and then, “Who is the person that could come in and do this? Who’s on my wishlist?” Minnie Driver was on the top of my list. I’ve known her for many years, and luckily, I knew she had this sense of humor and would understand this role and take her to the next level, which I really feel like she did. She was so funny. She was having us laughing on the set.

Could we see Bryan Greenberg’s character return?

DS: Absolutely. I mean, he’s in Paris working at the American Embassy, and I love the idea that Emily can have an American friend in Paris, which she didn’t have before. You know, it’s normal when you come to Paris and you’re from the States, you find other Americans to be friends with, and Emily hadn’t found another American yet.

Do we think Emily is going to go to Greece next season? We see Gabriel [Lucas Bravo] send her the postcard…

DS: It’s possible. Gabriel’s on a boat, but who knows how Emily’s going to react?

What is Emily’s past life like in Chicago?

DS: She’s so consumed with Paris, she doesn’t even think about Chicago!

Will we ever learn more?

DS: We’ll learn more. We’ll get some… I think next season we’ll find out even more about Emily.

The season ends with so many cliffhangers — did you have any inkling that we could get another season? At the end, nothing’s tied up in a bow.

DS: I always want to write cliffhangers to sort of compel Netflix to order another season, so that they themselves want to know what’s going to happen next. I don’t want things wrapped up, because that could mean the show’s over. I don’t want it to end yet.

In the finale, Emily was very empowered and didn’t choose to stay with Marcello. Why is it important for you to not box her in and let her grow?

DS: Well, I think the choices she made clarified what she wants in her life, and she’s found a life in Paris. She has her own life and she wants to pursue her own life and her own dreams, and that became the most important thing. She realized that was what was most important to her, at the end of the season, [being with Marcello] was someone else’s dream, not necessarily hers.

To what do you credit the magic of the show?

DS: I think not knowing what it is is sort of a great thing. I think it’s that sort of unknown quality of what makes any show a hit, the sort of chemistry, whatever makes it happen. It is a mystery, and it’s why you can’t sort of formulate hit shows. They have to spontaneously happen, that sort of magic combination of cast and storyline and everything. It’s like an alchemy, and it’s wonderful when it does happen.

Just when things are going well for Emily, you have a tendency to pull everything out from under her. Why is that?

DS: Well, I think that you don’t want anything to feel too complacent, even in life, even in our own lives. Sometimes I think we have the tendency to sort of unconsciously make trouble in our lives when things get too boring, and I think it just happens maybe a little bit on steroids in Emily in Paris, but I think it happens in life, too.

Some people love poking holes in the storylines, like ‘How could Emily afford these clothes?’ What do you say to people that are trying a little too hard to piece it all together?

DS: Well, number one, it’s not a documentary, and it’s entertainment. Just relax and let it wash over you and be entertained, and realize that there’s nothing you see on any TV show that’s real. Period. The end. Nothing in television or a movie is real. This is just a different kind of non-reality, but nothing you ever see on anything is real.

At the end of the day, do you want Emily to end up with someone or choose herself again and again?

DS: I can’t answer that, because I haven’t decided how the show is ending. It’s still evolving for me. I just feel like I stay in the moment of the characters and the story, so I’m not sure right now.

Emily in Paris season 5 is streaming now on Netflix.