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The seventh and final season of The Good Doctor has already killed off one doctor, and fans are now worried that the beloved St. Bonaventure president could be next. Keep reading to see if Dr. Aaron Glassman dies in The Good Doctor finale.
Does Dr. Aaron Glassman die in The Good Doctor finale?
The Good Doctor just set the stage for a tragic ending. The penultimate episode saw the return of Dr. Claire Brown (Antonia Thomas), who left in Season 4 to take a job in Guatemala. While fans were elated to see her again, she wasn’t back at St. Bonaventure under great circumstances. As viewers learned at the top of the episode, Claire had a lump in her breast and needed Dr. Shaun Murphy’s (Freddie Highmore) help. The lump was originally thought to be benign, but further testing proved that it was, in fact, cancerous. After back-to-back surgeries, Claire’s breast cancer was successfully removed and she would only have to undergo hormone therapy. Later on in the episode, however, Claire passed out at Dr. Morgan Reznick (Fiona Gubelmann) and Dr. Alex Park’s (Will Yun Lee) impromptu wedding, implying that something may still be wrong with her.
Fans were so focused on Claire’s health that they never saw the bombshell about Dr. Glassman coming. In the last few minutes of the episode, Glassman told his surrogate son Shaun that his cancer was back. He also revealed that it had progressed to a glioblastoma. Although Shaun suggested they look into new, experimental treatments, Glassman claimed they would be of no use. “It’s terminal,” he told Shaun, adding: “I’m dying.”
Glassman was first diagnosed with brain cancer back in Season 1 and was told he only had four months to live. After undergoing chemotherapy, the neurosurgeon eventually beat the cancer and his grim diagnosis. His medical issues did not stop there, though. In Season 6, he learned that he had suffered a series of mini strokes that rendered him unable to perform surgery.
His cancer returning is a devastating twist, but not surprising. In the seventh episode of Season 7, Glassman made a phone call to a lab to check on the status of some scans. Although he didn’t say who the scans were for and what they were of, fans assumed it was related to his brain. The only question that remains is if he can beat the cancer again.
Since the show is ending for good, this is most likely how his character will be written off. Co-executive producers David Shore and Liz Friedman seemingly confirmed his death in an interview with Parade. “It seemed like a natural place for the story to go,” Friedman said. “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.” Shore added: “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.”
Claire’s health is still up in the air as well, so the series finale could feature more than one tragic death. News of both doctors’ cancer comes shortly after Dr. Asher Wolke (Noah Galvin) was murdered in an anti-semitic attack during Episode 6. Killing off Asher was also a storytelling decision, with writer Adam Scott Weissman telling The Wrap that his death was “a satisfying ending” for the fan-favorite character. “We came into this [episode] with the thought that life doesn’t always have happy endings. Sometimes things happen suddenly and in a tragic way,” he said.
