The Good Fight to End With Season 6 — Robert and Michelle King Explain Why
Court will soon be in permanent recess on The Good Fight: The legal drama’s upcoming sixth season — premiering Thursday, Sept. 8 on Paramount+ — will be its last.
The series’ conclusion will bring to an end Robert and Michelle King‘s 13-year ‘Good’ franchise, which began with the 2009 launch of The Good Wife on CBS.
In an interview with TVLine, the Kings (who are also EPs/showrunners on Paramount+’s Evil) explain that quality control issues and sheer exhaustion fueled their decision to call it quits. And they confirm that it was their decision.
“We got tired,” Robert says with a chuckle, before elaborating, “And we looked at how we were building Season 6 and felt that if there was ever a time to end the show it was [now], given the cataclysmic nature of the season. And as much as the show was great in reacting to the zeitgeist, it felt like it would have a certain repetition if we kept going.”
Adds Michelle: “Season 6 is very much about civil war [erupting] in our country, and it felt like that was the story to tell in the last season of this show.”
Good Fight‘s final season — previewed in the teaser trailer atop this story — finds Diane experiencing an “uneasy sense of déjà vu, with everything from Roe v. Wade to voting rights to Cold War aggressions returning,” per the official teaser synopsis provided by Paramount+. “Meanwhile, the lawyers of Reddick & Associates wonder if the violence that they see all around them points to an impending civil war.”
As previously reported, several Good Wife vets will pop up on The Good Fight in Season 6, most notably Alan Cumming (reprising his role as Eli Gold) and Carrie Preston (returning as Elsbeth Tascioni). Additionally, Emmy winner Andre Braugher is joining the cast in the series regular role of Ri’Chard Lane, a showman lawyer and rainmaker who is forced on Liz (Audra McDonald) as a new name partner.
In a statement, David Stapf, president of CBS Studios, called The Good Fight “a marquee series for Paramount+ and a huge source of personal pride for me and our Studio,” adding, “We are so excited to see [what’s] in store for the final season; I have no doubt that it will be memorable.”
So what’s the series finale date going to be?
Probably how ever many episodes there are away from the premier, I don’t feel like doing the math for you.
Harsh AF Chris.
it premieres in September, I read somewhere, so anywhere from October to November or December?
“… premiering Thursday, Sept. 8 …”
thank you, missed that, sorry
Presumably by Xmas.
November 10 if it’s a 10-episode season like most of the others (Evil is getting 10 episode for season 3 so I think it’s likely).
you are tired so you cancel a great show, not right somehow.
Actually it is right if they need to stop it for there health. You wishing them more stress and exhaustion isn’t right. Empathy look it up.
It’s like quitting a job because you are burnt out. It happens all the time. You do realize that they don’t owe you much of anything? You are very fortunate they’re doing a final season to wrap everything up.
Isn’t that the perfect time?
It would be a yr 7. So everyone would get new contracts write around that and whatever covid restrictions plus their 13 seasons in in writing similar stories, only so many original shows you get till, the well dries up and then you get accused of a stale show
This has been my favorite thing on TV the last few years, but I’m glad the showrunners aren’t going to drag out the ending and watch the quality slide. Six or seven seasons was probably the right call.
This is a fantastic show. Have missed it. Sorry it is not being revived on cable or regular TV.
Shame that Alicia never popped up on it, yes i know she was supposed too but stopped over payment issues.
Agreed. I wish they could figure out a way to get Julianna back. Even if for one episode.
This is a show that took the accomplished actor Michael Sheen and made him perhaps the most unlikable character in the history of television a few seasons ago.
Then, last year, they took the incredible Mandy Patinkin and made him a laughingstock as a made-for-TV judge working out of a storeroom in Chicago.
What a drastic fall from The Good Wife days. Christine Baranski deserves better. As does Gary Cole.
Gary Cole has it on NCIS. 👍
I thought Michael Sheen’s character and performance were brilliant and a stunning comic achievement for the ages.. Sorry it didn’t work for you but I absolutely loved it
Wait, how is it a bad thing they gave Michael Sheen a role that he could act the #$!% out of? I thought the character and storyline and its effects on Maya were all too over the top and absurd for my liking, but giving Sheen something for him to dig his teeth into and absolutely transform into something he hasent played yet is not a bad thing.
Ok the role was CRAZY and he acted the hell out of it (fentanyl lollipops!) but his accent was jarringly bad. It hurt to listen. And I love this man. Still miss him chewing the scenery on Prodigal Son
Spot on! I could not have said it better myself … kudos to chpa.
Yrs, wasn’t michael sheen absolutely horrid? I will never ever forger the great performance he gave making me loathe him. And Mandy Patinkin, no longer catching truly loathsome serial killers, what an awful thing for this great actor, to play a naive man hoping for justice in the swamped courts of America. Christine Baranski, Broadway star, currently also brilliant playing a stick-up yet pitiable blue blood in The Gilded Age, her career in ruins because of The Good Fight. Just awful. Oh, and Cole. Please.
so much
I never enjoyed it as much as The Good Wife, but it was still a great drama and I think they’re taking a good decision, ending it while the show is still full of quality. I’ll miss it for sure! Thankful that Carrie Preston and Alan Cumming will have final encores at least, but it’s a shame we never saw Archie Panjabi or Julianna after The Good Wife wrapped.
The pandemic prevented the great Raul Esparza (as Brian Kneef) from a second episode. I wish he could come back in this last season.
I hope Alicia returns in a cameo!
Don’t count on it. She has stated that she wants to be paid the same rate as she was when she was the star of “The Good Wife” for any appearance on “The Good Fight.”
Six seasons is a good run and I’m sure all the creative folks involved will find promising new work. Some of them already do have other shows. The whole Good duology was a great creative achievement!
Can’t help but wonder if the show should have wrapped when Delroy Lindo and Cush Jumbo left, but that’s just me.
I’m only on season 4 at present, but those “Good Fight Shorts” they went overboard with, combined with Michael Sheen’s most ridiculous role ever and that unbearable right wing toxic social media hack, almost made me stop watching. I liken it to wrestling, where there’s “bad guy heat” where they are doing a great role being the bad guy, and then there’s “go away heat” where you switch off or skip when they appear. Those characters were the latter for me.
Most of the season 1 arc was thrown in the bin from s2 onwards and Mia became an absolutely worthless character.
Best thing in the show hands down is Sarah Steele as Marissa Gold. Give her a spin off working with pops.
Well, it is my favorite show, so I’m pretty depressed about it, but it was a great run.
yes, it’s time to put a fork in it! there’s just been way too many lonnnggg protracted gaps between seasons! certainly the pandemic didn’t help! with so much time between seasons, the stories just drifted…. that being said, it was a BRILLIANT show! I even liked it better than The Good Wife! and that’s saying something! hoping it gets the closure and send-off it deserves!
oh well. Can’t argue with their reasoning but there goes yet another of the best tv series i’ve ever seen.
The end of peak TV is coming.
My wish is to have Alicia guest before it ends.
Sorry—excellent show
Now it’s time for CBS to develop a Marissa spinoff.
They’ve only done fifty episodes in FIVE years and they’re exhausted??? They did well over a hundred in the first five years of The Good Wife. It’s their show and they can do what they want but most people would kill to have what they had.
That’s still 201 episodes over 13 years. Put that into perspective. Not every show is/wants to be a 30+ year soap opera or a 15-20+ year crime of the week drama. As long as they get a finale that they decide on, that’s all that should really matter in the end. Your comment screams entitlement.
You misunderstood my comment. I’m not saying that I wanted to see more episodes of The Good Fight. It was never, in my opinion, as good as The Good Wife. When I think of the people I know who work long hours and work hard for decades and get nothing near the bucks and benefits these two have, it seems almost an affectation for the Kings to say they’re exhausted. They should have simply stopped at saying they couldn’t continue to come up with new creative ways to push the show’s story along.
Paramount should have just replaced them. They were horrible showrunners anyway!
You’re right. I loved The Good Wife but they stunk up the last season so bad that I rarely watch it as that season always colors your perception of the earlier seasons. It was akin to how the ending of Battlestar Galactica killed off that franchise.
All good things come to an end, but not all are tied with a sufficient bow!!
Hopefully loose ends will not leave us hanging..
Honestly good. The creativity was lost in The Good Wife’s final season and it felt so rushed. So I’m glad that this time they know what they’re doing and are going to end it the right way.
It’s been a great show! If they ever need another spin-off … I vote Marissa Gold working in PR, that would be fun.
A spin off show about Roland Blum (Michael Sheen) & Maia Randell’s (Rose Leslie)new DC based law firm would be great!