A familiar face. Emily VanCamp‘s character on The Resident was killed off last year, but now she’s coming back — and it’s happening soon.
Co-showrunner Peter Elkoff confirmed that the Revenge alum, 35, will return for the season 5 finale, which is set to air on May 17. The producer explained that VanCamp’s character, Nic, will appear in flashbacks to help her husband, Conrad (Matt Czuchry), realize that it’s OK to move on with another woman.
“We started to realize, what would hold a person back? Well, the love of his life who died. The mother of his young daughter,” Elkoff told TVLine on Tuesday, April 19. “We had to figure out a way to both free him and end that chapter. Emily was really up for the idea of coming back, so we built her story around that idea.”
In August 2021, news broke that the Captain America: Civil War star planned to exit the medical drama after four seasons. In the second episode of season 5, viewers learned that Nic had been involved in a serious car accident. Doctors attempted to save her in the third episode, but she succumbed to a brain injury, leaving Conrad widowed.
After Nic’s death aired, VanCamp explained that the birth of her daughter was a major reason she decided to step back from the Fox series. The Canada native and her husband, Josh Bowman, announced the birth of Iris in August 2021 after keeping VanCamp’s pregnancy under wraps.
“I spent so many years on network television, but then suddenly priorities shifted,” the Everwood alum told Deadline in October 2021. “I think there comes a moment in every woman’s life — in every person’s life — where it becomes less about work and more about family, and that’s what happened while I was making the show. Doing that many episodes in a different city and then you add COVID to that, most of us couldn’t see our families for almost a year. It really solidified for me that family is where my heart is at the moment.”
The former Brothers & Sisters star also took to Instagram to thank fans for their support of The Resident over the years. “Feeling so much gratitude for the relationships I’ve gained, the stories I’ve had the opportunity to tell and the many lessons I’ve learned from playing Nic Nevin on The Resident,” she wrote at the time. “Thank you to everyone who came on this journey with me and this wonderful character.”
VanCamp’s onscreen husband found out early on that she planned to exit the show. “I was one of the first people she had told, and she said she wanted to start a family,” Czuchry, 44, told TVLine in October 2021. “I was completely supportive of that and had been, of her, from the beginning.”
The Gilmore Girls alum noted that the former TV spouses remain close despite the fact that they no longer work together. “There’s so much respect and love there, and that goes very much into our personal lives,” he explained. “Emily will always be a part of my life.”
The Resident airs on Fox Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET.
