‘The Resident’ Boss Teases What’s Next in Season 5 After That Mostly Happy Finale

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Resident Season 4 finale “Past, Present, Future.”]

Welcome to the world, Georgiana Grace Hawkins! Dr. Conrad Hawkins (Matt Czuchry) and nurse practitioner Nic Nevin’s (Emily VanCamp) lives are never going to be the same, now that their baby girl is here.

Also in happy news in The Resident Season 4 finale, Dr. Devon Pravesh (Manish Dayal) and Leela Devi (Anuja Joshi) kiss, as has been in the cards for a while now. And Dr. Jake Wong (Conrad Ricamora) and his husband Gregg (Christopher J. Hanke) officially adopt Sammie (Chedi Chang).

Meanwhile, Dr. AJ Austin (Malcolm-Jamal Warner) needs Dr. Barrett Cain (Morris Chestnut) to operate on his mother — and to his surprise, the neurosurgeon shows up! But Cain may be leaving Chastain; he has a job offer from Johns Hopkins. Plus, Dr. Billie Sutton (Jessica Lucas) gets the shock of her life when the son she gave up for adoption and didn’t want to meet (his father raped her when she was 13) shows up at her door.

What’s next? TV Insider asked co-showrunner and executive producer Peter Elkoff.

Will there be a time jump heading into Season 5 or will Conrad and Nic still be parents to a newborn?

Peter Elkoff: We’re making all those kinds of decisions. There are lots of pros and cons. There’s something fun about these two fantastic medical professionals and great parents trying to take care of a newborn. There’s also something delightful about giving them a little time to take care of a slightly older child.

Were there any conversations about naming Conrad and Nic’s baby after Nic’s sister? Or did you always know that you want to do the mothers?

We always knew it was the mothers. We have to clear names and we had a lot of different versions of it that couldn’t clear. It was this crazy rush to figure out what combinations of the two mothers’ names would actually not get flagged because they were real people with that name. It was hectic and funny at the last minute.

I loved the new grandfathers — Marshall [Glenn Morshower] and Kyle [Corbin Bernsen] were so much fun in these last two episodes.

They’re really hilarious together.

Are there tentative plans to have that continue with the baby now in their lives?

I think that’s going to be a big part of Season 5: How does this baby impact the lives of all the people around in its periphery?

Dr. Kit Voss [Jane Leeves] is grappling with what she had to do to help Chastain financially. Is that something that’s going to impact the way she approaches being CEO going forward?

Absolutely. She will find herself in one of the classic Resident thriller storylines dealing with some of the less heroic sides of the medical-industrial complex. She’ll be fighting a good fight in Season 5.

AJ had quite the roller coaster of a season, and while there is hope for his mom, he’s still struggling with Mina [Shaunette Renée Wilson, who left in Episode 10] being in Nigeria. How much will both those things — his mom’s continued recovery and missing Mina — be part of the onscreen story for him moving forward?

Mina won’t be. We will finish that story with his mother in a good and emotional way, and AJ will have new and big adventures, both medical and romantic, to deal with.

Dr. Randolph Bell [Bruce Greenwood] has taken on an almost quiet, background role at times at Chastain.

He’s going to be very involved in our thriller storyline in the fifth season and he’s going to be working hand-in-hand with Kit to deal with this new obstacle that she’ll face as the head of the hospital. He will have great big medical stories and his story with Conrad Ricamora [who plays his former stepson]. Yes, he was a little more in the background, but we’re going to bring him back into the foreground.

Is he the happiest he’s been with his career and his life right now?

Yeah, Dr. Bell has found what had been missing emotionally. I think the character has found the balance that he never had between career and family. That’s a very good observation.

You seem to have this dance growing with Bell and Kit where I’m never quite sure if they’re going to take that step or they’re just going to remain good friends. Is addressing that out on the table for Season 5?

[Laughs] We’re going to leave that up in the air.

On the other hand, you did go there with Devon and Leela.

We love them together, and we’re going to tell a really fun story in Season 5 between them. There’s going to be lots of medicine and romance.

Cain has a decision to make about his future. What came first — this decision or figuring out how to have him still around with Morris Chestnut’s availability going forward? [Chestnut is a series regular on Fox’s new drama, Our Kind of People.]

Interestingly, we didn’t know about the Lee Daniels show when we made this decision. We just liked the idea that he’s going to make a decision to stay or go and we’ll use him as we can and as the story fits. It turned out to be a really good decision that we made that we left it open-ended since we are not going to be able to have him for every episode. You will see him, but not in an episode after episode way.

I noticed in the finale he says he’s there to help. He doesn’t say he’s there to be a hero or save the day.

Right. Yes, we did give him a nice redemption story, but we didn’t want to make him a softy. He still might leave the hospital that put up with all his stuff. He showed up because he knew that there was nothing for him to gain by helping Carol, but it was the right thing to do. He’s learned that lesson, but he might walk away from the hospital, despite that. As Billie says in the episode, “when somebody gives you a second chance,” so she’s not leaving Kit [after what she did for her]. After Cain says, “I could probably get you a gig at Johns Hopkins too,” she says “no way.” He hasn’t been redeemed that much.

He didn’t let AJ know he was on the way. He’s still Cain.

He just showed up. He’s still Cain. He’s adjusted and he fell for Rose [Cara Ricketts]. He got the courage to stay close to a woman who maybe wasn’t going to live. He’s managed to make leaps in some areas, but not entirely in others because it wasn’t believable to make it perfect.

Just as Billie’s found her footing being back at Chastain, her personal life blows up. How is her son just showing up at her door going to affect her?

It’s going to change her life. We have a very big season 5 storyline that we’re going to play around that. You’ll see the ramifications of it.

Jake and Gregg adopted Sammie! Considering what it took for them to get there — the other adoption falling through, Sammie’s surgeries — are there more bumps in the road planned or will they be happy?

Since we haven’t really started talking about Season 5, I can’t say we are 100 percent sure how that is going to go. But I like to think it’ll be some smooth sailing.

Do you know how much are we going to see Conrad Ricamora next year?

We don’t know for sure, but we like the idea of him continuing to recur in the way that he did this season.

Will there be any other potential exits between seasons, or is the plan for everyone to come back?

That’s the plan.

Is there anything else that you can tease about plans for Season 5?

I will tell you that when our audience finishes the first episode, they will be shocked by a couple of changes that have occurred.

Will the doctors be actively trying to find startups with cures, like Conrad, Nic and Devin had discussed?

That’s what we’re actually going to be sitting down in the next couple of days to talk about: How do we want to pick up that particular storyline in the fifth season?

Looking back at Season 4, was the general plan to have a happier finale considering you started the season with the COVID storyline?

Yeah, because of the way the season started and what the world was going through, we didn’t want to tell one of those [darker] stories. We wanted to tell stories about heroic doctors. We felt like to cap off the season, which we’re really proud of, we wanted to see everybody get the thing that they’ve been working towards this whole season. We wanted everybody to come out ahead of where they started.

The Resident, Season 5, Fall 2021, Fox