4 Shows With Major Season Finale Returns We Can’t Wait to See
TV shows tend to end seasons with big episodes, and part of that may include major returns, some known in advance and others as surprises for viewers.
For the 2021-2022 season, we already know that we’ll be seeing a Resident star whose character died in perhaps the most heartbreaking episodes of the series earlier this year. Chicago Fire is celebrating a wedding with a special guest. Two actors are returning to Grey’s Anatomy, which might give some fans the update they’re hoping for about their favorite couple. And Law & Order: SVU is bringing back a former ADA-turned-defense-attorney who left things in a rough spot with Captain Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) earlier in the season.
Scroll down as we keep track of all the major returns — and what we know to expect from them — already set for a finale this spring.
Chicago Fire
Firehouse 51 may have said goodbye to one of its own when Matt Casey (Jesse Spencer) headed to Oregon to look after his late best friend’s sons, but it seemed inevitable that he’d be back sooner rather than later. He does, after all, have to be Kelly Severide’s (Taylor Kinney) best man for his and Stella Kidd’s (Miranda Rae Mayo) wedding! And that is exactly what brings him back in the Season 10 finale, airing May 25.
Casey will “support Severide through what will be a very topsy-turvy wedding,” executive producer Andrea Newman told TV Insider. “He’s also there to spend time with Brett [Kara Killmer, whose character is still in Chicago]. These are two people who are really in love, but there are a lot of challenges for the couple. It puts a spotlight on their situation and how different it is from Severide and Kidd, who live together and get to see each other every day.”
Grey's Anatomy
Jesse Williams and Sarah Drew are returning as Dr. Jackson Avery and Dr. April Kepner in the Season 18 finale (back-to-back episodes airing May 26). Last we saw them — Drew returned for Williams’ exit arc in Season 17 — they moved to Boston with their daughter, though they weren’t romantically involved at the time. However, both were single, so who knows what’s happened in the past year? No details have been released yet as to what brings them back to Grey’s.
Law & Order: SVU
Raúl Esparza is back as Rafael Barba, the former ADA and now defense attorney who has been opposite Sonny Carisi (Peter Scanavino), the detective-turned-ADA, in court each time he’s been in New York since his Season 19 exit. Last we saw him, he represented Richard Wheatley (Dylan McDermott), as he stood trial for the murder of Detective Elliott Stabler’s (Christopher Meloni) wife Kathy (Isabel Gillies) in the Organized Crime crossover earlier this season. “I feel betrayed by you, and I don’t know how I’ll ever get over it,” Benson told Barba.
So what brings him back? Detective Amanda Rollins (Kelli Giddish) enlists his help after bonding with a domestic violence victim (Jordana Spiro) in the Season 23 finale (airing May 19).
The Resident
Emily VanCamp’s nurse practitioner Nic Nevin died in a car accident earlier this season, but we’ll see her again in flashbacks in the May 17 Season 5 finale. The flashbacks will go back to “a pretty happy time” for Nic and her husband, Dr. Conrad Hawkins (Matt Czuchry), as he tries to figure out how to move on.
“We have sort of set up both Billie Sutton [Jessica Lucas] and Cade Sullivan [Kaley Ronayne] as potential love interests for Conrad, in fairly subtle and sometimes less so ways, but he hasn’t figured out who, and there are complications on both sides,” executive producer Peter Elkoff told TV Insider. “At the beginning of the last episode, he realizes, for a lot of reasons, that he has to figure out how to move forward with his life.”
