After Lea left him heartbroken at the end of The Good Doctor last week, fans might have been surprised to see Dr. Shaun Murphy so optimistic at the start of this Monday’s episode. Certain that he could still convince Lea to become his girlfriend (she did say she loved him, after all), Shaun continued to pursue her by showing her that he could “handle” her messy and needy ways — until at last, she grew tired of all of his attempted romantic advances.
For the second week in a row, Lea rejected Shaun. But unlike in episode 16, when Lea walked away from him after he asked her a hard question about his autism, she was more straightforward this time around: “Shaun, I already said no,” she said when he tried to ask her on a date at the end of episode 17. “You’re autistic. You can’t fix that. You are who you are, and I am who I am. And the two of us — we’ll never work.”
Of course, there are many fans who have long been rooting for Shaun and Lea to make the leap from friends to romantic partners (some of whom have even been doing so since season 1). But after multiple failed attempts at making it happen, those same fans are started to get frustrated with Shaun and Lea’s “Will they or won’t they?” storyline:
This content is imported from x. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.
“Well Lea just ripped out my heart … into a million little pieces,” another fan tweeted during the episode. “I’m not liking this begging with Shaun and Lea. Let him move on,” a third wrote.
Even still, other fans are still holding out hope that Shaun and Lea might end up in the end together anyway — especially if Shaun can take a step back from pursuing Lea so aggressively and focus on nurturing the deep friendship they already have.
Plus, there are still three more episodes left in The Good Doctor season 3 … so who knows what they (and the confirmed season 4) might hold!
