‘Doc’: Felicity Huffman Breaks Down Joan’s ‘Greek Tragedy Ending’ (VIDEO)

Felicity Huffman was always going to only be on Doc as a series regular for one season, but that doesn’t make Dr. Joan Ridley’s exit any less heartbreaking or tragic. Warning: Spoilers for the Doc Season 2 finale ahead! 

Joan was dying going into the finale, but she still insisted on helping when the hospital went into lockdown after a patient died of a highly contagious strain of hemorrhagic fever. She took charge of contact tracing, then stepped up to operate on Amy (Molly Parker) alongside visiting surgeon Ben (Blair Underwood, a series regular in Season 3). That depleted her of everything she had left, and she died, offscreen, with her family by her hospice bedside.

“Isn’t that great writing?” Felicity Huffman raves about Joan’s last big hero moment of saving Amy in TV Insider’s video interview above. “That’s the writers and Hank Steinberg and Barbie Kligman. It’s a fantastic twist; they did that, yes, it’s a huge surgery on Amy. It saves her life and ultimately costs Joan her life. It’s a wonderful, mythic sort of Greek tragedy kind of ending.”

John Medland/Fox

Joan does share one last moment with Amy at the latter’s hospital bedside when she wakes following the surgery. “I’ve given all I had, but you, you, Amy, you’ve got plenty more to give, so give,” Joan tells her. Amy promises she will.

Huffman calls that “a beautifully written” scene. “It was very gentle and … a beautiful farewell,” she adds. “I love that scene.”

Speaking of Amy, one moment that Huffman was not on the same page as her character was when it came time to choose who to save with the limited anti-virals they had. Joan says it’s unethical to pick who to save, so they put names in a hat.

“I think it took all her moral fortitude to go, ‘Wait a second. I’m a doctor first and a friend and a mentor second,'” Huffman admits. “I worked on it with my husband [William H. Macy], and I was like, ‘It doesn’t exactly make sense because if you save Amy, she’s going to save hundreds, if not thousands, throughout her career.’ So had it been me, I would have put my finger on the scale, which is probably why I’m not a doctor.”

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Joan dies with her family by her side, something she never would have expected when we first met her at the beginning of the season; she’d thought she’d burned those bridges by choosing her work over her son in the past. Huffman says it’s “sweet” that she gets her son back in the end.

“It was a lovely moment when she’s lying in hospice, and Ethan [Connor McMahon] is holding her hand, and that’s how she’s going to go out, which is how I hope that we all get to go out surrounded by loved ones,” the star tells TV Insider.

As Huffman says goodbye to Doc, she says, “I want Joan to be remembered as Amy’s champion.”

Watch the full video interview with Felicity Huffman above for more about her time on and exit from Doc.

Doc, Season 3, TBA, Fox