ABC‘s The Good Doctor ended its seven-season run tonight with Part 2 of its two-hour finale which, like many episodes of the medical drama, mixed tragedy and triumph to close out Shaun Murphy’s journey on a hopeful note.
The closer dealt with the aftermath of the two shocking Part 1 cliffhangers: Glassman (Richard Schiff) telling Shaun (Freddie Highmore) that his cancer had returned and it was terminal, and Claire (Antonia Thomas) collapsing in Kalu’s arms. They set Shaun on a race to help two of the most important people in his life who are both in grave danger.
He eventually does his thing and finds a treatment that could add a year to Glassman’s life but no matter how many times he pitches it, progressively mitigating potential risks and side effects, he is turned down by Glassman who implores him to accept his decision to not seek treatment and spend the 3-6 months he has left enjoying time with him, Lea (Paige Spara) and little Steve.
It takes awhile — and some persuasion from Lea and Lim (Christina Chang) — but Shaun eventually comes around.
Meanwhile, Claire’s post-op infection turns out to be from acinetobacter, resistant to antibiotics. Before she is put in a coma to help her body fight, she tells Kalu (Chuku Modu) that she loves him. He says it back to her and urges her to stay strong: “I can’t say goodbye, I just got you back.”
Shaun comes up with an unorthodox plan to fight the bacteria with a virus, which involves collecting numerous bacteriophages to find one that could kill the infection before it kills Claire.
This is a painstaking process and, while Shaun and Co. keep at it, Claire’s condition continues to deteriorate to a point where Kalu suggests they amputate her arm — ending her surgical career — to save her life in an impassioned speech.
After a bacteriophage match is finally found, the FDA rejects the treatment, leading to Shaun making a fateful decision. He gathers Lea and Glassman in the same boardroom where his future at the hospital was decided in the pilot. Using the same opening line about losing his brother from the original speech that convinced the board to give him a chance, Shaun reveals his decision to administer the treatment to Claire, which would cost him his medical license. Glassman steps in and, with the team watching on, he starts her IV.
The episode ends with a 10-years time jump when Shaun is Head of Surgery at St. Bonaventura giving a TED talk with Lea, Steve and his little sister, along with Claire, Kalu and their daughter and the rest of the gang — including Lim who had left to join Surgeons For a Better World — all in the audience. Shaun, who, along with Claire, co-heads the Dr. Aaron Glassman foundation for neurodiversity in medicine, ends his speech with another reference to his boardroom plea from the pilot, noting that he now has “two televisions” along with many friends and a family.
In interviews with Deadline, The Good Doctor star Freddie Highmore and co-showrunners David Shore and Liz Friedman dissect the finale’s biggest twists, including Glassman dying, Claire losing an arm and Glassman helping save Claire’s life and Shaun’s medical career. They also discuss Shaun’s long journey to accepting Glassman’s decision not to pursue further treatment, all the pilot references (but no flashbacks!) in both parts of the closer, and why, in a full-circle moment, the show returned to a location used for the pilot to film a key finale scene.
Shore and Friedman also explain where the main characters are in the flashforward, why they opted not to reveal whether any of Shaun and Lea’s children have autism and why Hill Harper did not come back. The duo also shared whether they had ideas for another season of the show, which Shore created based on a Korean format. (And no, the two series’ conclusions have nothing in common as Shore has never seen the finale of the Korean drama.)
For more on Highmore, Shore and Friedman’s comments about Shaun’s evolution throughout the series and Thomas’ finale return, check out Deadline’s Part 1 interview.
DEADLINE: The two-part finale felt very condensed. Was the storyline in it supposed to be a longer arc?
FRIEDMAN: Initially I did see it as playing out a little bit longer although really, it was only one story that got consolidated. We were headed in this direction, and I had thought of it as something that could be either a season ender or series ender. And then when we learned that it was going to be a series ender, we moved some things around a little bit to be able to give a more complete resolution. But it was pretty close to how we planned it.
DEADLINE: Can you reveal what story got consolidated because of the condensed time?
FRIEDMAN: I’d rather not. It’s in its perfect form the way it is.
DEADLINE: Did you always envision Glassman to die at the end of the series?
FRIEDMAN: I don’t think we’d really decided on that. David, had we?
SHORE: I would certainly not say we always envisioned that. But we got him very sick at the beginning. Liz ran with this in Season 7, I thought in a great way, and it just felt like the right ending. We wanted a hopeful ending but nor did we want a perfect ending because that’s been the nature of the show throughout, that things are not perfect, but they are hopeful. And I think it fit very nicely into that theme.
FRIEDMAN: We’ve always tried as the show goes on, every season we give Shaun a new challenge. That is something that would have been interesting to play, seeing him go through the process of Glassman passing and then finding his way to be a grownup and have a family and do all that without his mentor.
I would have loved to have seen that process. But also I think that was clearly a challenge that Shaun was going to face, and this allowed us to see how much he’s grown and is able to move past it and make something great out of it.
HIGHMORE: Obviously, there are two episodes or even less than that really for Shaun to have that journey and to go on that process of realization. And I think that the way that David and Liz decided to have the very last act take place in the future was an excellent way of showing that, If we have one episode to deal with Shaun and Dr. Glassman and the finality of that episode, it can’t take place within a week or within a set of weeks.
You need to see the way in which Shaun, over those 10 years that we are without him, has been able to move on and grow and learn as an individual.
And on that note, I think one of the things that I’ve been most careful about and wanting to focus on and make sure we did a good job at is, from the very beginning, we were aware of the stereotype of someone who has autism who will always be the same and somehow will never be able to change.
Of course Shaun has autism, has always had autism and he always will, but that doesn’t mean that he can’t grow and change and learn as an individual as all of us can. There’s a stereotype that he will or should have been always stuck in his ways, but I’m proud of the fact that we have given him a journey as he deserved, and that his preferences, his desires, the essence of what makes him a human being has been able to evolve and change.
DEADLINE: Speaking of Shaun’s evolution, let’s talk about him making the decision to give up the meaning of his life, being a doctor, in order to save his friend Claire and the decision by Glassman, the other very important person in Shaun’s life, to step in to protect his protege one last time.
FRIEDMAN: I think there is just a lovely symmetry to me that it’s Shaun wanting to save Glassman and unable to take in the fact that Glassman doesn’t want to be saved and that’s not the right decision for him. For Shaun to accept that, I thought was such a big step for him.
And, and then also at the same moment to be ready to give up the exact thing that has given his life a shape and a meaning and it’s given him a path to save his friend. That’s a great heroic story, and that’s who Shaun is.
SHORE: Originally, when we were working on this final story, it was always Glassman stepping in, but it wasn’t Shaun’s decision. It was — I don’t know if I should give that away — but collectively we realized what better symbol of his growth as a human being than to be willing to sacrifice like that. And it so connects to what Liz was just talking about in terms of accepting loss.
FRIEDMAN: We really liked the idea that there would be two cases in this episode. And in one of the cases, the solution would be that you have to accept, and the other case gets solved by the refusal to accept.
HIGHMORE: Yes, I think it was very special that at the end, the only patients left for Shaun to work on and to help were people that he cared so deeply about and that the audience cared deeply about.
I think on the Glassman side, it was a huge journey for Shaun to get the point — and we’ve seen him struggle with this over the years — but come to terms with the fact that at some point — and obviously in the finale, that comes sooner that they had hoped — he is going to have to navigate the world on his own without Dr. Glassman who has always been by his side but who has been able to set him up to be more independent and to move forward on his own without his guidance. But I think that was a huge moment for Shaun to get to, the acceptance of that and the acceptance of it in a mature way as well.
DEADLINE: What was Antonia’s reaction when she realized that Claire would be put through the wringer and lose her arm? Until the last second in the OR, I thought that Shaun may come up with the one of his brilliant ideas and save the limb.
FRIEDMAN: No, no, it wasn’t meant to be. Antonia is great, and she’s always game for anything. And yes, she was good to go as always.
SHORE: And we never even thought about saving her arm really, it was important to this. The speech that that Chuku’s character gives would have been rendered moot had we saved the arm. It was again, sacrifice for a greater good.
DEADLINE: Freddie, were you OK with that development?
HIGHMORE: Yes, I think it was also a relief that she survived. It feels like at least these things were as good as they possibly could have been for Claire at the end. I don’t harbor any regrets or feel guilty through my character.
DEADLINE: After years apart, Claire and Kalu reunited and fell back in love. Probably a little too quickly for me, there was “I love you” said like 10 minutes after they’d met. What was behind the decision to bring back the romance; was it the fans asking for them to get back together for some unfinished business?
FRIEDMAN: Our intent was to have Claire return to the hospital and be able to comment on how people had changed and specifically how Shaun and Lea had changed.
