‘Transplant’ Boss Explains Why Bash’s Ending Is a ‘Happy’ One in Series Finale

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Transplant series finale “Never Too Late To Start Again.”]

Everyone is ready to move forward by the end of the Transplant series finale.

For Bash (Hamza Haq), that means opening his own clinic, something Mags (Laurence Leboeuf) had known about and wanted him to do before her death. For June (Ayisha Issa), it’s not taking the job in Cleveland but instead, after a pitch from Novak (Gord Rand), staying and running trauma OR together. Theo (Jim Watson) is leaving, to take over a family practice.

Below, creator Joseph Kay breaks down where the finale leaves Bash, June, and Theo, talks revival possibilities, and more.

Bash decides to open up his own clinic. When did you know you wanted to end his story on the show with him following in his parents’ footsteps, and was he ever tempted to take that residency position?

Joseph Kay: That was something that evolved. We introduced the concept of Bash being interested in the kind of medicine that he used to practice. We started introducing that in Season 3 when he went back to a refugee camp outside of Syria to do that, so we were seeding it there. And inside Season 3, we were also telling a story about Bash getting the chance to be a surgeon because he was actually a surgeon before the war and he might not get that opportunity again. And so we had sort of a long game of having him come back essentially to public health. So that was the plan for him to practice in a public health context, not just as a family practice, but in more of a public health practice where he can help people like him and broader cross section of the community who have different access points when it comes to medical care. So that was a plan.

And in terms of staying at Memorial, the hospital on the show versus opening up his own shop, we thought because Bash is a character who has always struggled with what he deserves and with a messy future and living in fear of that messy future and convincing himself of the reality that he doesn’t deserve one. So again, in terms of the dramatic choice, we thought, well, if he has the opportunity to stay in the safe harbor of this hospital and he chooses it, that’s a little bit less bold for him, a little bit less brave than choosing, as an immigrant, to hang out his own shingle, which is a lot bolder thing to do and it speaks of a certain confidence, nascent maybe, fledgling maybe, but it still speaks of a certain confidence and belief in himself and that he’s allowed to have what he wants and not what people think he should want.

And that’s why I think it’s a happy ending because he never thought he deserved anything, but in the end, he deserves what he wants, which might sound benign to you and me, but to Bash, it really isn’t. He’s spent such a long time thinking he deserved nothing. So to me, it’s kind of huge, even though some might find it small.

So June is staying, and she says that there are people there she cares about and who care about her and she deserves that, something she needed to learn to feel. She’d had a conversation with Mags about that. So how much was it a personal and how much was it a professional decision for her?

It’s mostly personal for her. She’s been on this journey of opening herself up. June really struggles with opening herself up, allowing herself to feel, putting her heart on the line, not just romantically, but emotionally with friends, be it Mags or Novak, or she explored the idea of having a baby. She took her stepsister into her life, who was a product of her really messed up relationship with her dad. She allowed Dr. Singh to become a surrogate father to her. And every time she would do this, she’d get crushed. She’d always get crushed.

But she’s realized it’s a small thing. She was running all the time, she’s always trying to ameliorate herself, which is actually something that I’ve really admired about the character. She’s always thinking and saying, “How can I do better? How can I get better?” But she decided to stop doing that and finally allowed herself to be somewhere where she accepted that people do care about her even though they’re all leaving because Bash is leaving and Mags died and Theo’s leaving. But she has this, what I think is an affecting work-based partnership with Dr. Novak, and they turn each other’s cranks in a non-sexual, non-romantic way, but that keeps her passion for what she does active. So she just came back to herself.

Theo’s taking over that family practice and things seem to be going well for him and Liz. Why is this the path that will make him happy?

Speaking of things coming full circle, Theo began our series a married man with a family who was about to inherit a family practice — that was where he started — from his first wife’s father. And he changed in a way more than anybody because all of that sort of conservative sort of married his high school sweetheart life, he built for himself fell apart in a series of falling aparts. And here he is back full circle, but he’s back having spent a lot of time earning the right to get back there. He thought that the grass was greener or that the road not taken was the right road. And he tried some of other roads.

We’ve watched him now for these four seasons, which is why we have this recurring story in Season 4 with this kid who has this really horrible affliction, MCAS (mast cell activation syndrome). It reminds Theo that he’s great at making connections with his pediatric patients. He’s truly great at it, and that’s his passion, and he just needed to go try other things before he came back to it. So he’s back where he started, but he’s happy now. Because if you looked at him in the beginning, he had those things, but he felt he didn’t try the other roads and now he feels he’s tried it and he’s back where he shouldn’t be.

So the question has to be asked, considering how often they happen now, would you ever do a revival of any kind, whether another season or a movie, seeing where Bash or any of the other characters are at any point in the future?

Yes, absolutely. I mean, nothing is planned, but if it came organically, yes. I really love all of those characters and writing for them and working with the actors and everybody who made the show. So if the situation for that presented itself and made sense and wasn’t just us repeating ourselves, yes.

Are there any ideas that you have that you can share?

I do, but I can’t.

Did you ever consider any other endings for any of the characters?

No, and I only say that because we were very deliberate in how we drew out the endings. We were thinking about it and planning it while we were writing Season 3, and we were trying to just follow the characters. So yeah, I mean, in the writing room you throw a bunch of things up on the board to talk about, but really, we were just following the characters, and this is where they let us. So we never considered anything else seriously for any of them. The main thing was, we kept saying a good ending should be inevitable, but also surprising. Can you manage to balance those two things? So the Mags thing is surprising, even though we told everyone we were going to do it by talking about how dangerous the surgery was that she was getting, and then we’re really okay with what’s inevitable in terms of what we built with these characters. We wanted it to feel grounded. So yeah, this was the plan for at least a year leading into making this season.

Because you had this plan as four seasons, did you ever at any point think like, well, maybe I could stretch this to Season 5, explore something further?

Yes, I definitely did think that. I spent a lot of time asking myself, if I did that, what would that extra season be? And while there were some ideas, none of them felt right. And I decided then to just keep going with what I had planned. I like writing for the characters. I like making the show. The longer that we made the show, the easier it got to make because we were a finely oiled machine as happens. And even while making the fourth season, it was hard all along to follow through and not just talk myself out of it at some point. But now after some time, I’m very happy that we did it the way we did it and everyone gets to start again.

Is there anything you can share about what those ideas were that you had?

No, because I explored some things, but they aren’t realized enough really. And that’s part of the reason. Everything that the writers and myself were talking about felt familiar and repetitive of what we’d already done. And because Transplant is this ensemble — I’ve said this before, it’s got this ensemble, which is great, but it’s mainly Bash’s point of view, and it’s mainly telling the story of his past and hoping to kind of fold it onto his present. It just can’t continue forever. We just didn’t want to feel as though we were repeating ourselves. So every idea that may have first seemed like a good idea, in the end we thought, no, we’re just cycling here and let’s just stick to the plan.

Transplant, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Peacock