'The Good Doctor' Has Finished Filming for Good

ABC’s hit medical drama The Good Doctor is set to end its run after 7 seasons and the cast is officially ready to say their goodbyes! The news comes from a fan who ran into Freddie Highmore, Will Yun Lee, Bria Henderson, and other members of the show’s ensemble cast on the second-last week of filming. According to Twitter user @chefbk11, the cast only has one more week left to wrap up the story of Dr. Shaun Murphy and all the other doctors at the San Jose Bonaventure Hospital.

The Good Doctor originally debuted back in 2017, starring Freddie Highmore(Bates Motel) as Dr. Shaun Murphy, a gifted autistic surgical resident. The show has had an incredible run so far and it even became the number one entertainment series in the Monday 10 PM time slot for Season 6 in the adults 18-49 demographic, as per ABC. Perhaps that's why executive producers and showrunners David Shore, Liz Fieldman, and Erin Gunn decided that Season 7 is the ideal moment to conclude the show — at its climax!

The final season of the show started airing on February 20, 2024 — with the latest episode spotlighting Shaun and Lea struggling to balance their parental duties with their personal lives. The Good Doctor, Season 7 will have 10 episodes in total and the next in line is Episode 5, “Who At Peace,” which is all set to air on April 2, 2024. The finalseason basically began with Shaun and Lea navigating parenthood right after Danny (Brandon Larracuente) decides to leave the hospital to focus on his family. Meanwhile, Shaun’s dynamic with Dr. Glassman (Richard Schiff) is still on the rocks and the nurses at San Jose Bonaventure are ready to unionize as Dr. Andrews (Hill Harper) resigns to support their cause.

‘The Good Doctor’ Season 7 Will Continue To Challenge Assumptions Around Autism

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Highmore talked about how the show has changed “perceptions around autism.” The actor reflected on the journey his character has had since the pilot episode, talking about how the cast and crew made sure to be very mindful of how they showcased Shaun’s autism and Savant syndrome.

Highmore continued to express the faith he’s had in the show’s primary plot in the following words: “I often discussed this hope and desire that the show would be considered, or at least it certainly was to us as more than just a TV show and that it spoke to wider issues and themes.”

Plus, for its final season, the show has also added Kayla Kromer, an actress with autism spectrum disorder to the cast as Charlie Lukaitis, a young medical student with ASD who only got into medicine because of Shaun Murphy. According to Friedman, The Good Doctor Season 7 basically takes a lot of inspiration from real life. She expressed this in the following words: “There really are several stories coming up in the season that are taken from issues that my wife and I had, or other people on the staff had as they had kids, and then figured out how to integrate that with working. So it’s trying to do something that’s both completely specific and also universal.”

The good thing is, after all those delays, we're finally going to be able to watch the final season culminate in its finest form as the filming winds up soon. The Good Doctor Season 7 is currently airing on ABC and the next episode airs on April 2, 2024.