what happened to will gardner on the good wife

Editor's Note: TV moves on, only we oasis't. In our new feature series It Nonetheless Stings, we relive emotional TV moments that nosotros just tin can't get over. You lot know the ones, where months, years, or even decades afterward, information technology still provokes a reaction? We're here for y'all. We rant considering we dear. Or, once loved. And obviously, when discussing fates and finales in particular, there will exist spoilers:

I experience like I need to begin this column past letting you know that I understand that Volition Gardner is a fictional grapheme. In my centre of hearts, I know that Josh Charles is very much alive and charming as ever on Netflix's new serial Away.

These past seven months, not to mention these terminal four years, have been hard for us all. But I assure you that I haven't had any kind of break with reality. I can nevertheless very much decipher fact from fiction—even with Trump as our President.

All that beingness said, I say to you on this 24-hour interval, more than six and a half years after it happened, I'm still non over Will Gardner's death on The Expert Wife. Every time I think of that shocking, devastating moment, I get a pit in my stomach.

Since Charles' debut in Dead Poets Society (along with Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead and my beloved Sports Night), I accept loved his lackadaisical amuse and sly grinning. My love for him reached its pinnacle with Will Gardner, a grapheme who smoldered with a repose intensity and palpable sexiness. The shock I felt when he died shook me to my TV viewing cadre.

Allow me to set the scene: We were more than two-thirds of the way through the CBS drama'southward stellar fifth flavour. Alicia (Julianna Margulies) and Cary (Matt Czuchry) had left Lockhart/Gardner and past extension Diane Lockhart (Christine Baranski) and Will Gardner (Josh Charles) to form their own firm. They had done this in surreptitious—covertly plotting their defection. Alicia had lied to Will's face. He felt betrayed. She felt justified.

Things betwixt Alicia and Will were tense. The erstwhile star-crossed lovers, whose timing had never been right, were at crosshairs on a number of fronts. They were contesting over clients. Will was under federal investigation for roofing upwards voter fraud in Peter's (Chris Noth) recent election as Governor of Illinois. In the fourteenth episode of the season, Will and Alicia travel to New York for the annual American Bar Association meeting where Alicia is slated to give the keynote address. They both reminisce about Alicia joining the firm and how Will gave his quondam law school friend a chance when no one else would hire her. They meet each other at a bar and Alicia asks him, "Why practice yous detest me?" Volition responds, "I don't like you. Hate is probably likewise strong." It broke my heart. There is, as the saying goes, a fine line between honey and hate and I don't call back either one of them fell on the hate side.

And do you lot know what I thought? (It's documented and easy to look up since at the fourth dimension I was recapping the prove for Paste). I wrote "I yet say those ii are hooking up again before the season is over." That'southward considering the sexual tension was a potent and simmering undercurrent to each episode. They wanted each other. Y'all could experience information technology. They had unfinished business. They belonged together. Similar Alicia, I thought they would have more than time.

On the fifteenth episode of the season, entitled "Dramatics, Your Honour," Will is defending Jeffrey Grant (Hunter Parrish), a college student accused of murdering a female person classmate. Jeffrey is in a fragile state and continually existence beaten up in lock-upward. Nosotros are enmeshed in this courtroom case until Diane and Kalinda (Archie Panjabi) hear gun shots in the courthouse. Kalinda runs to the court to notice Volition lying on the flooring covered in blood with ADA Finn Polmar (Matthew Goode) desperately trying to finish the bleeding. Jeffrey had taken the court officers gun and started shooting. It was, as the episode titled suggested, dramatic.

By the next scene Diane and Kalinda are at the hospital trying to find out Will'due south fate. Kalinda, always the investigator, recognizes the shoes on i of the corpses and pulls back the sheet to reveal Will's dead body. I screamed. Like tragedies that unfold in real life, we had no warning.

I cannot stress how shocked I was. Main characters aren't often killed off without whatever alarm or foreshadowing. Especially non in the centre of multiple major storylines with and so much unfinished romantic business organisation. We usually know when actors are leaving a show. (For example, it has already been appear that both Cush Jumbo and Delroy Lindo are leaving The Skilful Fight).

What my hubby remembers virtually about that night the episode aired is that while he was sitting next to me on the couch I kept saying "No! No! No! He can't be dead. This has got to be a dream sequence or an alternating reality or something." I call up it took me hours to believe Josh Charles and Will Gardner were off the show. My denial ran deep.

In the age of social media, it's most impossible to proceed a TV surprise of this magnitude under wraps. At the end of the fourth flavour, Charles had opted not to renew his contract, merely gave executive producers Michelle and Robert King and the show's writers the opportunity to write his graphic symbol off. No one let information technology leak that Will would die—not the bandage, not the crew, not all the extras who were in the scene. No one.

We were all shocked and unprepared. The shock immune his expiry to resonate. Sure in that location were many means they could have written off Volition's character. He could have moved or joined some other firm. The door could accept been left open up for him to return. As a critic, I recognize that killing him off was the best decision creatively for the bear witness. Information technology opened upwardly new romantic opportunities for Alicia and was a reckoning for her character. The finality of Will's death meant Alicia could no longer hibernate her true emotions. However, as a fan, information technology was devastating.

In the side by side episode, a grief-stricken Alicia is consumed by a voicemail Will left her hours earlier his death. "Alicia … hold on your honor … I'll call yous back," were his final words to her. She fantasizes over what he was wanting to tell her. Was he calling her because he was angry with her? In her final fantasy, Alicia imagines him saying "I want to be with you and only you. Forever." Like Alicia, that is the scenario I chose to believe was the reason for his telephone call.

Each character deals with their grief in different ways. Kalinda tries to figure out if it was in fact a bullet shot by Jeffrey that killed Will and why he did it. David Lee (Zach Grenier), who is moved to tears (!), immediately starts strategizing about how to continue Will's clients. Diane fires a client who insists on meeting with her. Cary goes all-in on a deposition the opposing counsel won't let him postpone. "I want to get out my assailment and my anger by destroying your client," he bellows. The unabridged episode was a devastating punch to the gut.

For Alicia information technology was a realization that she should accept been with Will when she had the chance. She can't fifty-fifty take a call from her husband or hug him back when he offers sympathy. Although she stays in the matrimony, she is so done with him.

Watching these episodes again in grooming for this column, I'm struck anew past what a stellar evidence The Good Married woman was. Information technology pulsed along on so many levels—political intrigue, romantic strife, interpersonal and family drama, legal thrillers. A truly astounding serial.

But the shock of Will's death never wore off. Over two years later, Josh Charles returned for The Practiced Married woman series finale. Will appeared to Alicia in a dream sequence. "I'll love y'all forever," she tells him. And honestly same, Alicia, same.

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Amy Amatangelo, the TV Gal®, is a Boston-based freelance writer, a member of the Television Critics Association and the Banana Television Editor forPaste. She wasn't immune to sentinel much Boob tube as a child and now her parents have to live with this every bit her career. Yous can follow her on Twitter (@AmyTVGal).

For all the latest Tv news, reviews, lists and features, follow @Paste_TV.

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Source: https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/the-good-wife/the-good-wife-will-gardner-death/

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