Before everything went to hell for the Boys and they were rounded up in the Season 4 finale, there was a glimmer of romantic hope for two of its members.

During a quiet moment of reflection, Kimiko and Frenchie had a conversation about forgiving themselves for their troubled pasts. Kimiko then admitted that she told Frenchie to pursue Colin because she thought he deserved to be with someone better than her.

“Mon coeur, there is no one better than you,” Frenchie replied. Reaching up on her tiptoes, Kimiko planted a kiss on Frenchie, which he happily returned after a beat. (Sadly, they wound up getting separated by Gen V’s Cate and Sam at episode’s end, prompting Kimiko to finally speak/scream, “Nooo!”)

The kiss “was such a magical moment because it’s been multiple seasons of speculating,” says self-described ‘shipper Karen Fukuhara (aka Kimiko) in the above video. “What made it even more special was working with [showrunner Eric] Kripke because he directed that episode, and I didn’t realize how he was going to shoot it. I saw the shot after a few takes, and it was, like, backlit, silhouette, beautiful… I just feel like it was the perfect way to do the kiss.”

Tomer Capone, who plays Frenchie, recalls calling up Fukuhara right after reading the script and sharing “our excitement” about the scene. “Each one [of us] said the word ‘cool’ approximately 15 times,” the actor tells TVLine. “It had that feeling where something is going to change, and it will never be the same again — for better, for worse, who knows?”

Capone felt the magnitude of the smooch on set, too, thanks to the reaction from the show’s production crew. “It’s like 50 people around you, and you can hear the sounds of the, ‘Aww,’” he remembers. “It was like one of those moments where you know you delivered something the fans wanted to see for a long time.”

Of course, it’s not the first time Kimiko and Frenchie have kissed: The pair locked lips last season after an imaginary musical number, but ultimately, they decided to just be friends. So what makes this time different?

“It’s not inside of Kimiko’s brain. It really happens,” Capone says. With that first kiss, “she imagined everything, and then she imagined starting [to kiss] Frenchie on the beat of the dance, and then it kind of came into real life, where she just moves her head down and let it happen. It wasn’t, like, a kiss-kiss, you know?”

The finale smooch, however, “comes from both of them. It comes at the same time. It comes with both of them letting it happen,” Capone continues. “Those characters are putting behind them all their traumas and pain from the past. So they’re starting to write their new chapter in life, and it’s exciting.”