Doc‘s season 2 finale wrapped up a main character’s arc by having them die off screen — while another cast member could be exiting the show.
During the Tuesday, April 14, episode of the Fox series, a contagion killed numerous people, including Liz (Conni Miu), before the hospital found a cure. Joan (Felicity Huffman), meanwhile, helped Westside Hospital out, but her leukemia got worse and she was seen on her deathbed in the last scene of the finale.
“There was a lot of discussion that came early on in Joan’s case. The good news is we had always imagined this as a one-year thing. She knew that and we knew that,” executive producer Barbie Kligman exclusively told Us Weekly. “It allowed us to arc out the character in a really good way and make sure that her entrance had the weight that it deserved — and her exit.”
Kligman was proud of how Joan’s story came to an end.
“What’s nice is she really got to say goodbye in several different ways, right? Her final real goodbye came in that scene with Amy and then we get to watch her go off into that good night,” she continued. “But she got to do it with dignity, surrounded by her family and in a heroic manner.”
The EP called Lucy’s death a “very, very tough decision,” adding, “The problem with anything like that is you can’t do a contagion and not lose people. It’s a fun twist that Joan ultimately did not die from the contagion. That would have been a little too easy. But you had to know that people got sick and obviously Amy wasn’t going to die.”
Kligman continued: “When someone dies this way, you have to care enough about them that it’s going to hurt. And that’s why it was extremely hard to do that with Lucy because we love her. The good news on this show is because we have flashbacks. You’re never really gone.”
Season 2 of the medical drama also featured Scott Wolf‘s return as Dr. Richard. The comeback seemed short-lived, however, when Richard floated the idea of leaving Westside Hospital after being on the outs with multiple coworkers.
“I am going to be coy and make that the cliffhanger it was meant to be,” Kligman teased about Wolf’s future on the show. “I will say that we love Scott and we love Richard. We have to use them in the best possible way.”
Kligman noted that Wolf could return even if Richard doesn’t stay at the hospital, saying, “If somebody dies or they leave, they can always exist in flashbacks. But what we’re planning for this season in the present, I’m not going to share yet.”
With Ben’s (Blair Underwood) introduction in the finale, the current “core group” isn’t going to change in season 3.
“Obviously with Amy and Sonya being co-chief residents, they’re going to need some residents to be chiefing,” Kligman teased. “So we’re going to have new residents that are working underneath them. We will get to see how they cohabitate in that spot but also how they lead?”
There is also the love triangle to worry about after Amy (Molly Parker) shut the door on Michael (Omar Metwally) and Jake (Jon Ecker) — for now.
“The love triangle will always exist. Amy loves Jake. Jake loves Amy. Amy loves Michael. Michael loves Amy. But there reaches a point where — as writers — you look at how many permutations you can do and sometimes things need to rest for a minute. This felt like the right path for Amy,” she shared. “She’s not going to go forth with Michael knowing that she will crush him again at some point because he will disappoint her. Also he is emblematic of her living in the past. She can’t do that anymore. Then Jake, they thought they could still love their exes and be together. It’s not true. It’s very hard for a strong person to be in a relationship when there’s someone else in the relationship.”
Kligman teased how that will play out when the show returns.
“What we were trying to do here was potentially start a relationship where there’s more runway,” she shared. “[With Ben], maybe there’s some chemistry. They’re both so smart in their respective fields of medicine and there’s a lot of room for them to butt heads. What is fun is Amy has no intention of going back into the past. We’re not playing it in the same way we have so far with someone waiting to get her. But just she didn’t see this coming and I think we can have a lot of fun with that.”
She concluded: “Blair has signed on for a year but one never knows what happens with that. All our characters in internal medicine will cross over with Ben to some extent.”
Doc has been renewed for season 3 and is streaming on Hulu.
