‘The Good Wife’ Surrogate Episode: What Happened to the Baby Still Haunts Fans

If you’ve ever done a full rewatch of The Good Wife, there’s a good chance you’ve hit Season 5, Episode 3 — paused — and maybe even skipped it. You wouldn’t be alone. Years after its original airing, the episode titled “A Precious Commodity” is still sparking emotional reactions, moral debates, and more than a few Reddit threads asking the same question: What happened to the baby in The Good Wife surrogate episode?

It’s not because the episode is confusing — it’s because it’s complicated. It doesn’t offer easy answers. For many fans, that makes it one of the most unforgettable hours of the entire series.

The storyline centers on a surrogate named Tara, who is carrying a child for Kathy and Brian. Midway through the pregnancy, doctors warn everyone that the baby has an 85 percent chance of developing Patau syndrome, a severe chromosomal disorder. Kathy and Brian want to terminate the pregnancy, as their contract allows. But Tara disagrees. She believes the diagnosis is wrong and decides to continue the pregnancy.

What follows is a legal, emotional, and deeply personal clash over control, autonomy, and responsibility. The court ultimately rules that bodily autonomy is absolute: Tara can’t be forced to have an abortion, even if the contract says otherwise. But then comes the curveball — Tara is already in her third trimester. Legally, the question becomes moot. The couple walks away. And the show … doesn’t say what happens next.

What makes this episode linger isn’t just the ruling — it’s the silence that follows. Did Tara go through with the birth? Did the baby survive? Did she raise the child on her own? Nothing is confirmed. It’s that ambiguity that has kept viewers talking for over a decade.

In a 2025 Reddit thread, one commenter asked, “Did they ever say what happened with the baby?” Another guessed that Tara had the baby and kept it, since third-trimester termination wasn’t an option — but admitted, “They never said anything, so this is my assumption.”

Some fans have called the episode “pointless” because of this lack of closure. Others argue it’s exactly the kind of messy, unresolved storytelling that mirrors real life. According to Entertainment Weekly’s recap, the episode builds tension through legal arguments while deliberately avoiding a clean emotional resolution, leaving viewers to wrestle with the deeper implications.

There’s something nearly timeless about how this episode explores consent, contracts, and control. Whether you watch it for the first time or the fifth, it sticks with you. The episode aired in 2013, but fans are still discussing it more than a decade later in 2025.

One Reddit user confessed they “skip this episode every time” during rewatches because it’s just too heavy.

You might not remember the court proceedings word-for-word in this episode. But you remember the way watching it made you feel. You remember Alicia being torn. You remember Will fighting to win. Finally, you remember the show giving you a ruling without a resolution.

Unfortunately, The Good Wife never explained what happened to the baby as the episode came to an end. Legally, Tara had control. Narratively, however? The show leaves it open-ended for fans to fill in the blank.