'The Good Doctor' Said "Goodbye" in the Series Finale — What Happened to the Spinoff?
'The Good Doctor' ended in May 2024 after seven seasons of television. Wait, wasn't it supposed to get a spinoff?
May 22 2024, Published 11:26 a.m. ET
As of May 2024, fans quite literally said "goodbye" to the staff at San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital. After seven seasons on television, The Good Doctor ended on May 21. The series followed Shaun Murphy (Freddie Highmore), a talented surgeon with autism who relocates to California amid his checkered career. The medical drama first premiered in September 2017 on ABC and received several awards and nominations throughout its broadcast. The show ended with the aptly-named tenth episode of Season 10, "Goodbye."
Many of the characters that fans have come to love and appreciate throughout the show's run got some bittersweet departures at the end of the show.
But although this might be the end of The Good Doctor, some fans may remember that a spinoff was supposed to be in the works.
The Good Lawyer was meant to be in production by now following its tease in The Good Doctor. What happened to the show? Unfortunately, fans won't be seeing this universe expand any time soon.
'The Good Lawyer,' a spinoff of 'The Good Doctor,' was canceled before it could even begin.
Season 6, Episode 16 of The Good Doctor was meant to serve as a backdoor pilot for an all-new procedural drama with a similar premise to its predecessor. The episode — titled "The Good Lawyer" — followed Joni DeGroot (Kennedy McMann), a lawyer with obsessive compulsive disorder who is tasked with representing Shaun after he is sued by a disgruntled amputee patient of his. Shaun empathizes with Joni due to their shared experiences as professionals with disabilities.
To the surprise of Joni's ableist colleagues, she manages to win Shaun's case and earn their respect in the process.
This brief storyline was meant to be spun off into its own series. The Good Lawyer would have placed Joni as the main protagonist and starred actors Felicity Huffman and Bethlehem Million. Although the series was meant to debut in the spring of 2024, the series would unfortunately never come to light.
During the infamous WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in the summer of 2023, ABC announced that it wouldn't be moving forward with production on The Good Lawyer. According to Deadline, The Good Lawyer shared a similar fate as another scripted drama spinoff called The Rookie: Feds, which was canceled after only one season as another casualty of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.
As of this writing, there are no plans for The Good Doctor to continue in any way, shape, or form. For all intents and purposes, the series is officially over with no sequels or spinoffs in the works. Fans will just have to wait and see if anything materializes in the future. The Good Doctor finale was hard for fans and the show will definitely be missed.
