Remember when Will Gardner was suddenly and senselessly gunned down in a courtroom shooting halfway through Season 5 of CBS' typically staid legal drama The Good Wife? (Who am I kidding, of course you do.) Since the series isn't exactly known for killing off its main characters left and right like Game Of Thrones or Grey's Anatomy, Will Gardner's death truly shocked viewers and was one of the most tragic moments in recent television history. But, according to the cast and writers at The Good Wife 's Farewell panel at the Tribeca Film Festival this Sunday, the series almost delivered a different big death instead that would've been even more tragic.
Julianna Margulies (Alicia Florrick), Matt Czuchry (Cary Agos), and Cush Jumbo (Lucca Quinn), along with co-creators/writers Robert & Michelle King, were all in attendance at the panel where this shocking revelation came up. "We actually thought there would be a death in the middle of the story," Robert King said about his and Michelle's seven-year plan for the series. "We didn't know it would be Will until Josh Charles wanted out of his contract and then it was like, Michelle and I looked at each other, 'Yeah. F*ck him," he jokingly said of when Charles chose not to renew his contract. "We thought we were going to be killing one of the children," he then revealed to horrified gasps from the audience.
If anything is more tragic than killing off your main character's love interest, it's definitely killing off one of her children. So for those who are perhaps still bitter about Will's cruel death, at least take solace in the fact that we didn't have to watch Alicia grieve over the death of young Zach or Grace. That would have been unbearable to watch.
But Robert King cited a good reason for wanting to kill off a character: "We thought there would be this horrible moment in the middle of the series and then it would kind of be this demarcation between the first half and the second half. It just helps you write if you know you're writing towards something," he said. And to the Kings, The Good Wife always "felt like a show you had to end," he said. "It didn’t feel like a show that you could keep having crazy things happen to you. At a certain point, you escape the realm of probability."
He has a point. Moderator Henry Goldblatt, editor of Entertainment Weekly, opened the panel by listing all of the crazy things that have happened to Alicia over the years: "Alicia has been cheated on, humiliated publicly, wrongly convicted of stealing an election, lost the love of her life in a courtroom shooting, been a survivor of corporate backstabbing, surveilled by the NSA, had her emails hacked, dealt with a meddling mother-in-law and an unhinged mother, found out her brother was dating a porn star, and defended a serial killer who was kind of obsessed with her."
And as heartbreaking as Will's death was on The Good Wife, I'm just glad that Alicia losing one of her children wasn't added to that list.
Images: CBS, Jeffrey Neira/CBS
