Some minor spoilers for Mistletoe Murders Season 3 can be found in this article, but we're honestly mostly talking about the weather!I love Mistletoe Murders. In general, Hallmark’s murder mysteries tend to be fun, but I particularly enjoy TV veteran Ken Cuperus’ series because he is making it more of a whodunnit by design. Ahead of Season 3's release, he told CinemaBlend the show is inspired by some eighties classics, and they jazzed up the premise with sweater sets, Hallmark Christmas decorations, and plenty of festive holiday events. Only, as is often the case in the realm of making TV, things aren’t exactly as they seem. A Lot Of Hallmark Christmas Productions Film In The Heat, Including Mistletoe MurdersIn fact, it can be sweltering filming Mistletoe Murders. I was able to visit the set of the Hallmark Channel Christmas drama back in July, yes that hot humid month many Hallmark holiday projects have filmed in, and while the show does shoot in Toronto, I can confirm summers there are still not for the faint of heart. It was sweltering, but when you’re filming a Christmas series, you need the coats and scarves and jackets to pull off that winter aesthetic. Season 3 --and minor spoilers -- picked up with Emily Lane (Sarah Drew) being confronted by her ex Aaron (Aaron Ashmore), and it was not what I’d expected. He’d warned her someone was coming after her former co-horts in Chimera, and she needed to go on the run. She took his advice, and only returned 11 months later, just in time for the holiday season, when our murder mystery kicked off. When we first met the characters at the heart of this week’s episode, Helen Smiley (Catherine Bell) and her husband Richard (Sebastian Spence), the wreathmaker was looking out for her partner. We saw her lovingly state, ‘Don’t stay out here too long, it’s cold out here.’ The moment was not remotely played for humor, but given what I knew about the season, it was actually a very funny joke. When I was on set it was thankfully an inside day for filming, but temperatures were scorching. At one point I noted it was 93°F (or 34°C) when I went outside to take a call. That, plus coats and jackets feels unimaginably hard to me. So how does the show combat the heat? Two Ways Mistletoe Murders Keeps Things CoolFirst, whenever possible, Mistletoe Murders is not out there seeking to film the show in July. Given the availability of their cast this year, and the release of the show this November, the middle of summer was just what worked out for Season 3. Secondly, there are several strategies the costume designers, cast, and crew use to keep cool. Sarah Drew confirmed to me “it gets real hot” filming these scenes in summer, and Ken Cuperus explained they use ice vests and more to help the cast out.You know the clothing can be [hard]. When we shot our first season was really difficult. We shot on only the backlot for our exterior stuff, and it was like a heat wave. You know, we had to like have cooldown vans, and Peter wore an ice vest under his clothes. But last season [Season 2] we shot earlier, we shot most of the outdoor stuff in April, so actually, I think we had a day of snow that actually set us back a little. Everything else was great. One big thing the cast also has to combat is sweat. Michelle Melanson, the executive producer on the show (who also happens to be Cuperus’ wife) admits “glistening” can be a big problem during these heat waves, particularly for series lead Peter Mooney, who is a sweater. (To be fair he does have to wear that black police coat a lot.) Make up comes in every two seconds. In fact, the first season before we rebuilt these sets to be air controlled in here, we were on the backlot, which is sort of a portable thing, and we were hot. Sometimes the makeup person would be at the feet of Peter, just patting him, because poor guy is the worst. Filming inside is OK, but one other point to note: Filming car scenes in the heat is also really difficult. Melanson told me about one time “Mayor Pemberton” David Hewlett (AKA fan-favorite character Ray) had to film in a car. The key thing to note is in order for the sound to work out, you actually can’t even have the air conditioning on!David Hewlett, who plays Ray, had to do a car scene, which of course, it’s ‘winter” so you can’t have the windows down. And you can’t run the air conditioning for sound, so he had to do a driving car thing. It was super hot that day. The poor guy, like, it was like he was being so good, but he got out and you could tell under his coat he was drenched [with sweat]. This isn't the first Hallmark production that has filmed in the middle of summer, and doubtless this won't be the last group of Hallmark mainstays to talk about it. As Ken Cuperus joked, it's always "something" with the weather, and Sarah Drew did tell CinemaBlend she'd honestly prefer the complications from the heat over shutting down for rain and lightning, so there's always a bright side.Extremely hot is better than storming, windblown rain, shutting down for lightning. I’m just saying, we had to shut down in the middle of a very dramatic scene. In the middle of my coverage for a very dramatic scene for an hour and a half for some lightning. It was awful! It was so sad!All I have to say is next time you are prepping to watch an upcoming Hallmark series or movie, please take a second to really acknowledge the actors are going through it with the weather in order to bring us all this wonderful Christmas schedule programming. Truly, they are hot heroes. And I mean that in the literal sense. Mistletoe Murders is back on the 2026 TV schedule, airing on Hallmark on Thursday nights and the next day on Hallmark+.