‘The Good Wife’ Creators Bid Fans Farewell, Explain Show’s Surprising Ending

The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King released a farewell letter to fans of the long-running CBS series that aired its final episode Sunday night.

The Good Wife Farewell

The Kings expressed their gratitude for the ongoing support of the show’s fans, who have stuck with it throughout all of its seven seasons. In the letter, the show creators and producers also took the time to explain what the thought process was behind The Good Wife finale.

“We wanted this series—a series that stretched over 156 episodes—to have some shape, some structural meaning. So after we realized we wouldn’t be cancelled after 13 episodes, we started to devise a vanishing point we could write toward. That structure, in our minds, was simple,” the Kings wrote. “The show would start with a slap and end with a slap. Each slap would involve Alicia. This would be the bookend. She would slap someone who victimized her at the beginning of the series; and she would be slapped by someone she “victimized” at the end.”

They explained, “In this way, the victim would become the victimizer. This is the education of Alicia Florrick.”

As the seasons moved forward, Alicia continued to evolve as a character, making decisions that propelled her forward. While she was always the character fans were meant to root for, that didn’t mean that every decision that she made was a good one. At times, she was the one doing the wronging instead of being the one wronged.

“But together all these decisions, legitimate as they were, added up to a character who was becoming more desensitized to her impact. She was becoming more and more like her husband, and, ultimately, Diane was the collateral damage,” the Kings wrote. “That we found interesting. Over seven years could you completely remake your character? Could a victim become a victimizer?”

“On one level this is empowering. It allowed Alicia to control her fate,” they added. ” But it also changed her. Ironically, at the exact moment she found the power to leave Peter, she realized she had become Peter.”

The Kings hope that by leaving the ending of The Good Wife open ended, there is hope that Alicia, unlike Peter, becomes more self-reflective and will learn from her mistakes.

“If the slap that started the series woke Alicia up—helped her overcome her naivety about her husband and the world’s corruption—then this second slap wakes her up to her own culpability. The question is what will she do with that?” the Kings ask.