‘The Good Doctor’ Star & EPs Talk Claire’s Return, Shaun’s Evolution & Finale Part 1’s Big Cliffhangers, Tease Part 2

Nellie Andreeva
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SPOILER ALERT: The story includes details about The Good Doctor Episode 709, “Unconditional.”

It’s the beginning of the end as ABC’s The Good Doctor tonight kicked off its two-part series finale. The first hour had hallmarks of a happy series closer — a wedding and a fan-favorite couple rekindling their romance after years apart — before the episode took a double dark turn at the end.

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Things got off to a great start when Claire Browne (returning original cast member Antonia Thomas) reunited with Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore) as she came by to get a lump in her breast checked out. It had been ruled benign in Guatemala where she heads surgery but it turned out to be cancerous. A surgery to remove it led by Claire’s ex Jared Kalu (Chuku Modu) and Shaun was initially unsuccessful but a followup did the trick, and Claire was on her way to a full recovery — and getting back together with Kalu after he called her “kind, compassionate and heart-stoppingly beautiful” and she confessed to him that she came to St. Bonaventure because she heard he was back and lamented not committing to him during their relationship.

Meanwhile, Aaron Glassman (Richard Schiff) tried to deal with former patient Hannah’s drug problem by taking her in and administrating limited dozes of Oxy, jeopardizing his medical license in the process. His plan failed miserably when he found drugs in her pocket. Upon discovering Glassman’s secret, Shaun was conflicted and ready to report his mentor to Audrey Lim (Christina Chang) before being dissuaded by Lea (Paige Spara) and his old confidant Claire.

“I’ve missed us,” Shaun said at the end of his talk with Claire about unconditional love, the fitting title of the penultimate episode.

“Me too,” Claire replied.

Cue in all fans of the show adding, “us three.”

Shaun went on to confront Hannah and told her how Glassman “didn’t fix me, he loved me unconditionally” despite Shaun being shunned from everyone else for being different, even his own family, and that, just like Glassman saw Shaun as “something more,” he “sees that you can be more.”

It worked, and Hannah told Glassman that she was headed to rehab but would like to come back and see him when she was done. The wording of his answer, “As long as I’m here, Ill be here for you,” would soon take on a whole new meaning. More on that in a bit.

Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Alex Park’s (Will Yun Lee) wedding was back on when Park accepted the challenge to organize a beautiful and meaningful ceremony in four days. He pulled it off, booking the bar where the two had their first date with a catch – the only available slot was 2 AM.

Despite the ungodly hour, everyone showed up, with Claire and Kalu exchanging telling looks during the vows. Soon, they exchanged more than that, sharing a kiss during the reception.

Grateful for his help with Hannah, Glassman praised Shaun, telling him, “You have grown a lot: as a doctor, as a father, as a man,” before sharing with him that his cancer had returned, and this time it was terminal.

Minutes later, after another kiss with Kalu on the bench outside the club, Claire collapsed, and he rushed her off to the hospital.

In the first of a two-part interview with Deadline, The Good Doctor star Freddie Highmore and co-showrunners David Shore, who created the series based on a Korean format, and Liz Friedman, discuss the first hour of the finale — including Shaun’s Hannah intervention, Glassman’s revelation, Morgan and Park’s wedding and Claire and Kalu’s reunion — and tease what is to come next week.

DEADLINE: Part 1 feels like a traditional, hopeful finale: we had a reunion and a kiss between Claire and Kalu that had been seven years in the making, we had a wedding. Talk about building that up until those cliffhangers with Claire fainting and and Glassman’s cancer bombshell.

FRIEDMAN: I’m just a sucker for a cliffhanger. I love a dramatic turn that just sends you into the next story, and the only thing I love more than one cliffhanger is having multiple moments happen at the same time. So this really seemed like a great way to build it, and I love that, in the midst of Morgan and Park’s very happy wedding, these two not good, dramatic things happen. That to me is just a great way to tell stories and try to give people a whole range of emotions as I find life does a lot of that.

Richard Schiff, Freddie Highmore
Richard Schiff, Freddie Highmore

HIGHMORE: One of the things that I loved about the end of the penultimate episode was that when Dr. Glassman tells Shaun, he is just sort of shocked. It’s not an immediate, complete rebuttal or anger; he’s just struggling to process it and understand what it means.

DEADLINE: What was behind the decision to rekindle Claire and Kalu’s romance? Was it you listening to the fans that this is a couple they wanted to see reunited?

FRIEDMAN: It really felt like a natural… When I went went back and looked at when Claire and Kalu said goodbye, it was a really sad goodbye when he left, and I do believe that there was still an attachment there and they just both had their own individual stuff they needed to get over.

DEADLINE: For the wedding, we had the proposal, preparations and the ceremony all within 2 episodes. Was it supposed to be that condensed, or did you do it that way because the series was coming to an end?

FRIEDMAN: First of all, we’ve done weddings on the show before, we’ve done them in a dream and then in a reality show and then an actual one. We really liked that Park, as the romantic, was running up against Morgan’s practicality and really just wanting to get this done to help the adoption, that seemed like a fun way to tell that story. And that just lent itself to it being an event that had to be pulled together quickly. That’s really how that story came about; it’s not that we planned to tell a much longer and slower wedding story, this was a twist on how to do it.

DEADLINE: The Hannah’s addiction storyline. Why did you decide to make it so prominent toward the end of the series? Was it about Glassman having to save one more person?

FRIEDMAN: That’s a really good question. Honestly, that was the story that we had started in motion before we knew this was going to be the the end of the series.

But I think it worked well. For me at least, what I liked is that it provided a good story for Glassman, and some good meaty moments for Richard Schiff, who’s a fantastic actor, and tied back to his backstory and some of the reasons why he was available to be Shaun’s mentor, and then gave Shaun an opportunity to help him deal with a real problem. And that to me felt like a really natural balancing of how much Glassman has helped Shaun over the course of his life.

And then when that happened, I found myself really believing Okay, I think Glassman would feel that he could tell Shaun about the cancer.

SHORE: As Liz said, she started that story before we knew it was the end but I think it did work out nicely for the reasons implicit in your question and explicit in Liz’s answer — that he was saving his daughter when he couldn’t save her the first time. It’s a nice bookend to what put him in the place to save Shaun all those years ago.

Freddie Highmore, Antonia Thomas
Freddie Highmore, Antonia Thomas

DEADLINE: Since Day 1, there have been two people that have always been there for Shaun, Glassman and Claire. Both of them are in the finale, and both of them find themselves in peril at the end of Part 1. Was this a conscious decision?

FRIEDMAN: That’s really interesting and it’s the first time I’ve thought of it so no, it wasn’t conscious.

SHORE: I always thought you had that in mind, Liz.

FRIEDMAN: Okay, now I revise that, let’s say I planned it all along. It was really about I’m a big believer in finales that have a nostalgia element to them; that’s something the audience wants, and it’s good to satisfy it. So that for me was just wanting to see Claire on screen again. And then we had an idea for how to make that a two-part story. It worked out fantastically.

HIGHMORE: It was so wonderful having Antonia back. She’s a close friend, we’ve remained in touch since she left the show. I feel one of the things the finale did so well — which I think all finales to some extent should do — is bring things full circle and tie it into where we left off at the very beginning. The opportunity to have her back was incredibly special because it did bring back for us filming it — and hopefully for the audience — those memories of the early days and it feeling conclusive by harking back to that.

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. She also is the one who helped Shaun realize how to embrace that Glassman needed some help with Hannah.

DEADLINE: In that conversation between Shaun and Claire, she spoke how, when she first saw Shaun in the pilot, he was barely communicating, and she would’ve never expected him to get to where he is now, a father and one of the best attending. Freddie, when you started the show, did you think that that’s where Shaun would end up seven seasons later?

HIGHMORE: First of all, I wouldn’t have thought or dreamed that we would do seven years. I feel to start on day one doing a pilot and think, I wonder where the character will be seven years from now, it would have been getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. But one of the things that I have always appreciated about the show — and saw as potential from the very beginning — is the opportunity for Shaun to evolve and learn and grow and change.

He was so naive and young and innocent in many ways, starting his first proper job in a big city, moving from the small town that he grew up in. To see where he’s got to today is remarkable. And I think, especially in broadcast television, and on procedurals where there’s naturally a desire to keep things somewhat similar week after week with close-ended stories, I think there’s often a push to have the characters also stay somewhat the same and not evolve too much.

But one of the things that I’m most proud of is definitely looking back and seeing how much Shaun has been able to change, and I think that always kept it interesting for me as well. It never felt static, it always felt like Shaun was changing and growing, and there were constantly new, exciting, challenging things to be able to play. I think that’s not only a testament to the character and the opportunity for growth but also David and most recently Liz who have always fought to keep Shaun evolving rather than falling into the trap of having him be the same week after week.

DEADLINE: What can you tease about Part 2 of the finale?

FRIEDMAN: We’re going to see Shaun and everybody in our St. Bonaventure family dealing with two of the most important and close to their own heart patients that they have had to deal with.

Part 2 of The Good Doctor’s series finale airs May 21. Check back then for Deadline’s expanded interview with Highmore, Shore and Friedman, focusing on the medical drama’s final hour and legacy.

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