Keep in mind there are some spoilers from Sunday’s episode of The Good Wife in the following paragraphs!
TV shows have been losing a lot of major characters this season, and no, we’re not just talking about those killed off on Game of Thrones. Last week, Dr. Derek Shepherd saw his exit on Grey’s Anatomy, and this Sunday, The Good Wife’s Kalinda Sharma also made her long-anticipated exit on the series. Or did she? Today, showrunners Michelle King and Robert King confirmed that Kalinda will return to the show during the Season 6 finale.
The two showrunners are pretty good about keeping this Kalinda reappearance stuff underwraps, and we’d expect nothing less from the duo that kept the death of a major character a secret a little over a year ago. However, Robert King did tell EW that the finale will answer “a lot of questions” related to Kalinda.
[The finale] answers a lot of questions regarding Kalinda, which I think there will be some mystery about. Has she truly left the show? Or are there still beats to be handled with, or story elements to be handled with her? So [the finale] answers the question of Kalinda for the year.
What that quote doesn’t say is whether or not Kalinda will actually appear in the present in the episode. The Good Wife has been known for its fair share of flashbacks, and that could be exactly where the CBS drama is headed at the end of Season 6. After all, last night’s episode seemed to feature a pretty definitive escape for the competent but often mysterious character.
Here’s how Kalinda’s big exit went down. If you’ve been following the falsified evidence plotline this season, you should already know that Kalinda got Diane into a bind when Diane used falsified evidence that Kalinda had put together when Cary was in jail earlier this season. The cat came out of the bag in recent episodes and Diane was facing jail time. However, Kalinda has been spending time with Lemond Bishop lately, and figured out a genius way of nabbing evidence from Bishop while framing one of his other cronies. Of course, she couldn’t stick around after putting herself into such a dangerous position with Bishop. So, she left, simple as that. She gave Cary a kiss, she got emotional with Diane, and she even tried to make amends with Alicia—but Alicia wasn’t home, so she left her a card instead.
By the time Cary showed up at her apartment the next morning, Kalinda’s cell phone had been disconnected and she was gone. We’ve known for a while that Archie Panjabi would be leaving The Good Wife, so it wasn't a huge surprise. Back in October, the actress signed an overall deal with Twentieth Century Fox that has her attached to a new drama pilot. With the endgame in mind, The Good Wife has been working to write out the character all season, and we’re just hopeful Kalinda made her big escape.
We’ll have to wait to find out what the Season 6 finale has in store. In the meantime, you can catch new episodes of CBS’ The Good Wife on Sundays at 9 p.m. ET.
