‘The Good Fight’ to End With Season 6 on Paramount+

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The Good Fight, the first scripted original series for the former CBS All Access, is coming to a close.

The previously announced sixth season will be its last. The final season of the series from creators/showrunners Robert and Michelle King will debut Thursday, Sept. 8, on Paramount+.

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“We’ve loved fighting The Good Fight these last six seasons. To be able to tell stories about an upside-down world in real time has been a gift. And to have worked with these talented, brilliant, generous actors, writers and crew has been a blessing,” the married duo said in a joint statement Friday. “Our hope-slash-scheme is to find ways to work with all of them again in the future.”

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, the Kings said the final season focuses on a coming civil war as Diane (Christine Baranski) faces what the streamer calls an “uneasy sense of déjà vu, with everything from Roe v. Wade, to voting rights, to Cold War aggressions returning. Meanwhile, the lawyers of Reddick & Associates wonder if the violence that they see all around them points to an impending civil war.”

The Kings, fearing that their critical darling would become repetitive should it have continued on, said that the sixth season felt like a natural ending point. The duo also noted that the series, itself a spinoff of The Good Wife, featured plenty of memorable characters who could provide ample material for yet another offshoot, though none is currently in development. (Read the full Q&A with the Kings below.)

The Good Fight hails from CBS Studios and Scott Free Productions. The Kings exec produce via their King Size Productions banner, which has been based for years at CBS Studios. John Slattery, Sarah Steele, Michael Boatman, Nyambi Nyambi, Charmaine Bingwa, Audra McDonald and Andre Braugher star in season six, with Alan Cumming and Carrie Preston having guest roles.

“Thanks to the creative brilliance of Robert and Michelle King, The Good Fight has been a marquee series for Paramount+ and a huge source of personal pride for me and our studio,” said David Stapf, president of CBS Studios. “Robert and Michelle took the bones of their network hit, The Good Wife, which pushed creative boundaries, and transformed it into a signature streaming series. It is a series that taps into the zeitgeist of the nation’s mindset to artistically reveal the absurdity and anxiety of a nation in transition, both culturally and politically. Their story was further elevated by the brilliant acting talents of Christine, Audra, Sarah, Michael, Nyambi, Charmaine and an amazing roster of regular and guest actors during its run. Woven together, this amazing collection of creative talent has presented a series that is admired by critics, peers and a growing global audience. We are so excited to see what this company has in store for the final season; I have no doubt that it will be memorable.”

The Kings also exec produce Paramount+ drama Evil, Showtime’s Your Honor and have the upcoming Happy Face for the streamer.

Why is this the right time to bring the show to its close?

Robert King: Michelle and I looked at each other at the end of last season and we were aware that a) we were tired; and b) sometimes it’s hard to tell where you’re tired or if you’re worried that the storytelling will become tired. You reach the end of not all the possible stories you can tell but what the characters were about. Michelle and I had an honest conversation about whether we were nearing the end. Then the build for this year was much about a cataclysm, it felt like the appropriate ending to all these stories.

Michelle King: Season six focuses a lot on a coming civil war. So instead of violence just being a metaphor, there is actual violence in the streets of Chicago around our law firm that you’re going to feel throughout the season. That felt like, “That’s how the show ends.”

How did The Good Fight become its own animal after what The Good Wife was before it?

Michelle King: The challenge of this show was to make it feel very different from The Good Wife because otherwise it would have just felt redundant. Once Trump was elected, the show had its mission; it made sense to see how Diane Lockhart (Baranski), this die-hard liberal, would react to this new world.

Robert King: We started with the idea that Hillary Clinton was going to be president and there was this glass ceiling that was going to be broken. Diane’s good fight there was she lost all her money and career, and the good fight was her trying to get back on top. But when the world shifted on its axis, the title seemed to take on a different meaning. There was still a fight for her in the world and a way to pursue a character as she is psychologically breaking down because of all the fights in the world that she’s losing. It was very different from The Good Fight, which was about the decline of a progressive; the decline of the liberals. Now, we’re in this world of politics and it’s unclear where we would go except to pursue what the zeitgeist is this year.

It’s hard to ignore our current news cycle, with what’s going on in Texas and in the Supreme Court with abortion and so on. Is there fodder here for a third spinoff?

Michelle King: It’s a flattering question because it suggests that somehow our show could change things, and I don’t think I’m that optimistic about what we’re able to do. It’s certainly fodder for storytelling, which we’ve not lacked. The worry was that we didn’t want to become repetitive. And to continue to have our characters react to what they see as the dismantling of our democracy could turn into something repetitive.

Robert King: That is one of the things that starts the season: Diane feels she’s in a perpetual state of déjà vu because she’s reacting to the same cases that she thought she’d won, not just Roe v. Wade but obviously gun control — all these liberal causes that have been falling apart in our hands. We thought that was a good problem this year but if you kept doing it year to year, I’d stop tuning in even if I created the show.

Is this the end of the Good franchise or do you have other ideas to mine? Are you kicking any ideas around? Have you pitched anything that’s in active development?

Robert King: I wouldn’t say never because there are a lot of fun people who would be fun to pursue in their own show.

Michelle King: We haven’t pitched anything; we are trying to land this plane.

Robert King: Then we have the second season of Showtime’s Your Honor and have Happy Face for Paramount+. And we’re in the middle of developing things for us that we’re not ready to pitch yet.

Michelle King: And we have [the unscripted show] Would I Lie to You on The CW.

Looking back, were there storylines that you weren’t able to get to with the franchise as a whole?

Robert King: We had a cartoon about China that we were never able to put on the air. I look at that every night and think, “What could have been.” It’s so fun. There was a story we wanted to tell with The Good Wife about the NFL that we were able to do this year in the third episode [of Good Fight].

What do you eventually hope viewers will take away from the ultimate series finale of The Good Fight?

Robert King: That Christine Baranski is the actress of our time. That’s probably not what the scene is about, though. We haven’t written it yet. We’re in the writers room now thinking it through. We hope it ends in way that seems inevitable but surprising and puts character first.

Interview edited and condensed for clarity.

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