Lordy, Lordy, happy birthday Cordi! It’s so fitting that Walker‘s return takes place on our guy’s big day because it feels like it’s been YEARS since we last saw Jared Padalecki‘s Texas Ranger.

But the show is finally back and jumping right into the action as Cordell and Trey  (Jeff Pierre) ramp up their hunt for The Jackal, a serial killer we first learned about last season as the case that nearly destroyed Captain James (Coby Bell). Have the guys gotten any closer to catching him? And how have they handled life without Cordi’s partner (and Trey’s crush!), Cassie Perez (Ashley Reyes), while she’s been out of town on assignment with the FBI? More importantly, how is Cordi dealing with his new living situation?

Of course, the man with the answers is Sassy Boots himself. So we rang up Jared P. to shoot the breeze about Walker’s newfound happiness, what The Jackal means for his crew, and what kind of dad he wants to be now that the kids are growing up. Oh, and how he managed filming with the cringiest “football” injury ever.

Finally! You’re back. It’s been forever! And we’re still looking for The Jackal?

Jared Padalecki: Yeah. We had a little five-month time lapse just to allow for all the strike stuff, but it’s still the same storyline. We pick up in the same storyline, for sure, with some time passed. Obviously, Cordell and Geri [Odette Annable] are a little more, um, advanced, than they were. [Laughs] Stella’s [Violet Brinson] back to college, and Augie’s [Kale Culley] back to nearing the end of high school. But The Jackal has reared its ugly head once again, and we got to go figure out what’s going on.

And you’ve been going without Cassie for five months, so it’s you and Trey, which is a pretty cool partnership.

Super cool. Yeah, Cassie was on our FBI task force, and she comes back to let us know what she’s been up to and to kind of say, “Hey, there’s something we might need your help on.” We all love her and miss her and are wondering where she stands. Is she going to stay or go? But Trey and James and Walker have been running amuck in her absence. [Laughs]

And how is her return going to change things? She comes back a little different, too.

She does. She’s had a little different experience and has had a taste of what might be available to her. And she has a different set of expectations. Obviously, she’s welcomed back with open arms from our other characters, but it’s sort of like, “Okay, well, we don’t know where she stands.” We want to be respectful of what she wants and what she needs to do, and we all secretly hope that she’s going to stick around.

And we’ve got a full-blown relationship going on with Geri and Cordi. They’re living together. How’s that going?

Yeah, I think it’s going well. They seem to be hot and heavy, and I’m glad that nothing happened in the five months between the wedding and Episode 401 to kind of sideline that. But that’s not to say that something won’t sideline that within Season 4. [Laughs]

Of course! Because he’s taking on this case, dealing with a serial killer, and I’ve watched enough TV and movies to know that when the good guys take on a serial killer, serial killers tend to target the people their pursuers love most.

You’re too good at this, Damian. [Laughs]

So this is putting a target on a lot of people?

Oh, yeah.

And how will Geri factor into this? Because you can’t just have her hanging out at the house. What is she going to get to do?

Well, good point. She has some stuff of her own going on this season that she needs to care of. And let’s just say that Walker has never been the best about admitting what is going on in his head. Probably something that the astute writers have noticed about [me] and just weaved into Cordell. [Laughs] But we certainly see Geri as sort of a grounding force and guiding light who is trying to figure out things like, “Well, these characters seem to be different, and this person isn’t really responding the way I expected or when I expected.” So we kind of see her as the lighthouse that’s saying, “Hey, you seem to have stuff going on.” Meanwhile, she’s also juggling kind of new responsibilities with Augie and Stella. Stella’s an adult and Augie’s almost an adult, so she’s not overbearing by any means, and she’ll always be “Aunt Geri” to some degree, but she’s taken on a lot and is doing it very well.

We see Stella relying on Liam (Keegan Allen) during all the trauma that she’s dealing with following the home invasion. Will Geri help out with that? Because I feel like Stella definitely at this point needs a mom.

Yes, she does. And Stella has a great arc this season. Let’s just say that many times this season, people accuse Stella of being just like her father. [Laughs] Oh, yeah. Stella is great at keeping secrets as well and keeping struggles to herself. So just like Walker has a tough time reaching out for help, we think Stella may have unfortunately learned that from her dad.

And how is Walker going to handle the fact that his daughter has been counting on Liam with all this stuff that’s been going on and he hasn’t been brought into the loop?

I think he understands more. Unlike prior seasons, I think Walker understands that his daughter’s now an adult, even though he doesn’t like it. It’s new for him. He spent 18 years with his daughter as his child, and now he’s kind of a year or two in to his daughter being an adult and able to make her own decisions. She needs to be responsible, and so I think Walker gives Stella a little leeway, hoping that she’ll remain the kind of stalwart that she’s always been. And then I think he realizes that maybe even though she’s surrounded by friends and family who are there for whatever she needs, that maybe she has a little bit too much Cordell Walker inside of her.

And Augie going into the military? This is a big step for a young man, and as much as a father would want his son to follow in those footsteps, it’s also like, this is a very dangerous line that he wants to get involved with.

For sure. Augie is coming into his own and has some ideas. He’s always been the kid who wanted to grow up a little bit too fast. And frankly, with the passing of his mom and his father being a Texas ranger who’s been abducted and had the house broken into and kind of always been in danger, I think he grew up long before the prospect of turning 18. But he wants to prove that he is an adult in his own right and that he has these ideas about how to secure his future. So Walker is trying to walk that line between, “I know you’ve been through a lot, you’ve been through more than most 70 year olds have been through,” and “Let’s tap the brakes, buddy.” And this is not disrespectful. This is my job as a dad, but I think also Walker finds that, because his profession is in law enforcement, sometimes he can come across a bit more harsh than he intends to.

Understandable, since it’s his kid! I will say, at the beginning of the season, this is probably the happiest we’ve seen Cordi. He’s eating a massive amount of steak. He’s in love again. He has put the ghost of his late wife to rest. The kids are growing up, he’s kind of reclaiming his own life again. Can he have this all, can he be happy?

Oh, Damian, you know TV better than that! Hell no. [Laughs]

He can have a lot sometimes and some a lot of times, but one of the things that [showrunner] Anna Fricke and I talked about from the get-go was trying to make sure that this version of Walker was more similar to life than just a TV version of a [person]. We never sought out to go like, “Well, it’s the end of episode, I roundhouse kicked somebody and now everything’s okay. Let’s all high-five!” This is more like, “Well, what did I miss while trying to get the bad guy? Oh, I missed my daughter’s graduation. Oh, I missed her birthday. I missed this. Oh, I didn’t call back my live-in partner that I was supposed to.”

And so there’s no pure win and there is no pure loss. So I think with Walker, though happy now, his life happens in seasons and not like TV seasons. Walker’s had some hard times and now is an easy time, but life is difficult, and Walker finds that out.

Still, it’s nice to see him getting to enjoy being the hero he is more than usual. Especially with Captain James. This season, the drama is his and Cordi gets to be there for him and support him.

Yeah. That is very true, and it’s great. Yeah, I agree all around. I think Walker is going to find out who he is in good times, which he hasn’t had a whole lot of chance to explore yet. And as with anything, if you haven’t had a lot of experience, you might not be as good at it as you would’ve hoped. We’ve all seen that Walker can be great in times of struggle. He’s had some reps in the gym as far as that arena goes. But let’s see who he is when there’s no bad guy to chase right now — especially when that bad guy might be strengthening themselves in preparation for when the Rangers come after them.

Before you go, was there anything that you’ve gotten to do this season that you just are so excited for people to see?

Big time. We’ve had a lot of fun, fun stuff. There’s something, unfortunately it’s the finale, so I can’t talk about it—I’ll call you privately [Laughs]—but I will say, in the first episode, we have a really fun sequence. We got to do a car-chase sequence in the back of a big rig.

And funny behind-the-scenes fact that no one knows about: During the Longhorns playoff game on New Year’s Day, I was walking around barefoot, my brother and his kids were over, and they were all playing and stupidly, I grabbed a piece of pizza and tried to run back to the couch to watch the game and I kicked my coffee table on accident! So I had a broken toe for the first three episodes and before shooting that sequence and for a couple episodes after, I would have to ice my foot, throw a sock on real fast, shove it into my cowboy boot, and run around park garages and throw myself around. Yeah, so that was fun. [Laughs] We laughed about it afterwards, but it was just hard to get the boot on and off.

They couldn’t shoot around the boot?!

I didn’t want to complain. We’d all been out of work for nine months because of the strike and everything. So I was like, I got it. I’m not going to complain about this. The show finally can go on, and I’m going to go like “Ouch, my toe hurts”? No, thank you! [Laughs]