After years of speculation, Danny Reagan (Donnie Wahlberg) has finally asked Maria Baez (Marisa Ramirez) out on a date. It’s just a quick scene during the closing moments of the “Blue Bloods” series finale, “End of Tour,” but it’s definitely promising and leaves fans hopeful that there’s more to come. Unfortunately, they don’t get to see more than that, as Danny attends the show’s final Reagan family dinner stag.

There happens to be a behind-the-scenes reason for that. Executive producer Kevin Wade told Deadline that time was a factor when it came to the couple’s failure to go public. “[A]t the end of their last scene together, there was a a hint of a whiff of a promise that they were going to leave that squad [room] and go off to dinner and end up at one or the other’s house, yes. But it felt like a big leap, with only two minutes left, after 14 years, to introduce them [as a couple] like that at the dinner,” he explained. While Season 14 was dotted with teases about Baez and Danny’s relationship going from platonic to romantic, there simply wasn’t enough time, in Wade’s opinion, to get them there.

To be fair to the show, Maria already attended a her first Reagan dinner during Season 11 — an experience that left Marisa Ramirez feeling emotional at the time. On top of that, one of the show’s actors was rooting hard for fans to get a little pay-off in the Danny and Maria storyline — even approaching a writer and asking for this specific scene