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So long, Glassy. With San Jose St. Bonaventure Hospital’s president officially gone, viewers have endless questions as to how Glassman died on The Good Doctor and why ABC’s medical drama killed him off in the series finale. Well, there’s an answer for everything — as tragic as that answer may be.
How does Glassman die in The Good Doctor?
Dr. Aaron Glassman — who’s been played by Richard Schiff since Season 1 — revealed in the penultimate episode of The Good Doctor — Season 7, Episode 9, “Unconditional” — that his brain cancer had come back and had progressed to a glioblastoma, an aggressive tumor that starts as a growth of cells in the brain or spinal cord that can quickly invade and destroy healthy tissue, according to the Mayo Clinic. “It’s terminal,” Glassman told Dr. Shaun Murphy in the episode. “I’m dying.”
Glassman was first diagnosed with brain cancer in Season 1 and was told that he only had four months to live. However, after undergoing chemotherapy, Glassman beat his diagnosis and learned that he was cancer-free — that is, until The Good Doctor‘s final season.
Glassman revealed in The Good Doctor series finale that he had three to six months left to live. Shaun, refusing to accept Glassman’s diagnosis, called together the team to find a way to save Glassman’s life. In the end, Glassman refused Shaun’s plans, as the neurosurgeon explained to Shaun that he didn’t want to suffer through painful treatments that would only extend his life by another six months to a year.
The finale continued with Shaun and Glassman spending his final months together, including a moving scene in which the two rode a carousel at night. At the end of The Good Doctor Series finale, Shaun revealed that he had established a foundation in Glassman’s name, which was co-run by Dr. Claire Browne, who survived her breast cancer diagnosis. The foundation aimed to help patients with neurological disorders.
Prior to the final episode, The Good Doctor showrunners David Shore and Liz Friedman seemingly confirmed that Glassman died of his brain cancer in The Good Doctor series finale. “It seemed like a natural place for the story to go,” Friedman told Parade in May 2024. “We had [Dr. Glassman] deal with this illness previously and it just seemed a real natural thing for us, that a challenge that Shaun would face is the passing of his mentor.”
Why does Glassman die in The Good Doctor?
As for why Glassman dies in The Good Doctor, Friedman also explained to Parade that Glassman’s cancer returning was The Good Doctor‘s final way of testing Shaun, who’s been somewhat of a surrogate son to Glassman since he joined San Jose Bonaventure Hospital, before the series ended. “Particularly having to deal with it in a situation where it happens, not out of the blue, but having some preparation for it and some choices of how to handle that,” she said. “That has always seemed like an area that would be extremely challenging for Shaun, and so it was a natural place for us to go to test him once again.”
Shore also added how Glassman’s death felt like “the natural course” of the story. “It’s very much a parent-child relationship and the show has been very much about Dr. Murphy facing new challenges. The biggest one is arguably facing life without a parent. I thought it was a nice way to bookend it,” he said.
While Glassman’s cancer is a major part of The Good Doctor‘s series finale, Friedman confirmed that it was always something in the back of the writers’ minds as a way to give Shaun one last challenge. “It was always a big story element that we thought there was a good chance would come back into play, and that when it happened, it would be a very significant challenge for Shaun,” she said.
Friedman also explained how Glassman’s cancer tested Shaun’s empathy and habit to answer everything with medicine. “I think you can expect Shaun to have an impulse to rely very heavily on the things that are most comfortable and familiar to him, which is medicine,” she said. “And to sometimes have a hard time or a challenge for him to empathize with other people’s responses, to take on somebody else’s emotional point of view,” she continued. “As we know, he and Glassman have a different emotional point of view on how to handle this. Then I think we will also see how much Shaun has learned and grown as a person over the course of the show.”
