'The Good Wife' Creators on Surprise Return, That Slap, and Alicia's 'Tragic' Ending
By Kate Stanhope
[Warning: This story contains major spoilers from the series finale of The Good Wife, “End.”]
Fans of The Good Wife were left with many questions about the legal drama’s closing argument, and thankfully co-creators Robert and Michelle King were happy to provide answers.
In a video interview that debuted immediately after the last episode aired, the showrunners broke down the many plot points and lingering questions about the end.
Discussing the very final scene of the episode, in which Alicia (Julianna Margulies) gets slapped by her longtime colleague and her husband’s attorney, Diane (Christine Baranski), the Kings said they wanted the finale to tie back to the pilot, which famously showed Alicia slapping her husband Peter (Chris Noth).
“The victim becomes the victimizer and that’s really the circle we see with Alicia, ” Michelle said in the video. Like the slap at the beginning of the series, Robert said Diane’s slap “wakes Alicia up a second time.”
Diane’s slap came from her hurt that her husband, Kurt (Gary Cole), was revealed to be having an affair during the course of Peter’s trial. However, Alicia “didn’t knowingly betray Diane,” Michelle said. “If anything, Diane was collateral damage.”
Read More ‘The Good Wife’ Series Finale: How Did It End?
Alicia was so determined to free herself from her husband, and so determined to protect her daughter, Grace, and make sure she went to college, “she was saving herself.”
However, Robert stressed they were trying to show “there were consequences to her decisions.”
However, things in Alicia’s love life were left very unclear. Will Alicia will end up with Jason (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), or if he left town before she could woo him back? “We wanted it to be a little ambigious,” Robert said. “The show has never gone in for easy answers.”
The biggest shock of all was, obviously, the return of Will (Josh Charles), who was famously gunned down in court and killed in season five when Charles opted to leave the series. The Kings expressed their gratitude that Charles returned for the series finale after more than a year away from the drama. “He’s fantasy because he’s the love that got away,” Michelle said of the need for Will to return. “So she can make him, in her mind, anything she wants him to be.”
But although Peter got off almost scot-free and Alicia decided to be with Jason, it wasn’t a happy ending for the complicated heroine. “Clearly, she’s made the choice to move beyond Peter which again, to me, is what’s so tragic about the slap,” Robert said, explaining that just when Alicia decides to “move on, she has found that she’s become sort of him.”
Watch the Kings’ full interview below:
