BIG LOVE SPOILER ALERT: stop reading now if you have not yet watched this show's series finale, reviewed by TV Fanatic HERE.

On the concluding episode, Bill was killed, but he also got his wish: all three wives remained a tight-knit, loving family. Why did creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer end things this way?

"The best thing that could be said of this kid who grew up on a polygamist compound and struggled all his life with that legacy was the creation of a marriage and a family that would endure," Olsen told TV Guide. "What's the best test of that? It endured on the other side of your passing, of your death."

Among other excerpts from a revealing interview:

What did we witness in Bill's church on Easter Sunday?
Olsen: In Mormon-speak, it's called a revelation. Mormon theology allows for that, and it's often used for abusive purposes and it's manipulated, but every once in a while, I think it's probably real, and that's certainly what we intended here. It's the emotional opening-up of this character, the rendering of Bill at a different level. It is the receipt of grace. [His sermon] is about family, and he has a vision of that.

Why didn't Barb go through with her baptism?
Olsen: It was emotional-based reason. When she said, "I can't do this. I'm not Barbara Dutton; I'm Barbara Henrickson," she wasn't saying, "I'm Mrs. Bill Henrickson." She was saying, "I'm married to two other women and I have seven, eight, nine other children, and that means the world to me." That doesn't mean she's not going to progress on her journey. It doesn't mean she was going to capitulate. It just means this wasn't the choice for her.

What do you want viewers to take away from the show?
Scheffer: It had a lot of ambition. It was about faith, it was about feminism, it was about a lot of things, but ultimately, we were always showing that marriage was something valuable in a culture that often idealizes it in a spiritually unrealistic way or throws it away as a kind of disposable value, and I think we actually accomplished that.