The Fast & Furious crew has dropped cars from the sky, jumped from building to building, and raced a submarine. But perhaps the franchise’s most entertaining sequence involved no cars, no original stars, and a baby named Carlos. Here, The Fate of the Furious director F. Gary Gray goes inside his film’s “frightening” climactic scene.

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Forget Three Men and a Baby — all The Fate of the Furious needed to create one of the year’s most crowd-pleasing scenes was one man and a baby. Oh, and an airplane, too.

The latest installment of the billion-dollar franchise did the impossible and turned Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) against his family. Well, of course the answer to why he betrayed his family would be to save his family. Cyber terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) kidnapped both Elena (Elsa Pataky) and Dom’s son, whose existence had been unknown to him and us. With Elena soon killed and Dom sent to Russia to hijack a submarine (yes, you read that right), how would Name TBD Toretto (he’d later be called Brian as a tribute to Paul Walker) be saved?

The unexpected answer: villain-turned-presumed-dead-ally Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham). Earlier in the film, Dom appeared to gun down Shaw in the streets of New York City, but yet, here he is, sneaking onto Cipher’s plane with his previously comatose brother Owen (Luke Evans). “Let’s go Scarface, these assholes aren’t going to kill themselves,” says Deckard, who, while his fellow former bad guy brother infiltrates the cockpit, heads to grab baby Toretto.

Finding Brian was the easy part, as the exit strategy proved to be a tad more strenuous. With the baby in tow and rocking headphones, which were playing “The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late),” Deckard fought his way past Cipher’s goons. The fight scene featured great action, adorable reactions from the baby, and amazing one-liners from Statham. “You were going to shoot a baby? You sick bastard,” Deckard tells one of his victims before turning to Brian and saying, “You’re not gonna want to see this,” and proceeding to repeatedly smash the henchman’s head on a table.

For EW’s Best of 2017 (Behind the Scenes) collection, Gray shared the challenges behind the sequence and why he refers to the young actor as “The Miracle Baby.”