There are spoilers from this week’s Person of Interest episode. If you haven’t watched the episode, yet, we totally suggest you stop reading this article before you end up regretting it!
Usually CBS crime dramas are not filled with the deaths of main characters. However, the network’s Person of Interest apparently prefers to be a little rougher around the edges. The drama already killed off Joss Carter (Taraji P. Henson, who will soon appear on Empire). Then, this week, during an epic episode that included a pretty big kiss, Sarah Shahi exited the series in a major way, getting caught with a gun to her head. The episode ended with the audience hearing a gunshot. We don't know for sure what happened, but things don’t look too good for the stoic but fearless heroine. So, why did Person of Interest potentially kill off another main—and female—character? Apparently, a pregnancy is the culprit.
At the beginning of the season, Shahi revealed to her producers that she was expecting twins. She says that initially the writers were trying to figure out a way to keep her around in a way that would make sense and they grappled with a pregnancy storyline, but eventually decided that would not work for Shahi’s character, Sameen Shaw.
“But they decided that there’s no way in which this character could be maternal. You can’t put yourself in front of death every single day and want to have a child, or have a child. It doesn’t make any sense for her, at all.”
Shahi tells TV Line that there is obviously a lot of physicality to her role on Person of Interest, so she worked as long as she could and then the writers wrote her out in a way that would be realistic, while still potentially leaving it open for the character to possibly, just maybe, come back one day.
“I was not allowed to work past the six-month mark — it was not considered safe — so we needed to do something, to set up an exit. Given the reality that the twins will be just a few months months old by the time we start shooting next year, we weren’t sure what my condition was going to be like, if I come back, all of that, so they needed to do something that would cover their asses….”
So, for now it’s better to say that Shaw has simply exited Person of Interest. Her death could turn out to be a ruse, but given the gunshot and time she's going to miss, it would take a serious effort to write her back into the show. In short, the characters are going to need to move on without her; so, being reintroduced later on is far from a slam dunk. In fact, it's probably more likely she won't return. Fans will just have to wait and see.
