Doctor Max Goodwin is officially on to his next adventure.
The lasting legacy for Ryan Eggold's beloved New Amsterdam character, however, turned out to be a bit closer to home than Geneva, Switzerland, where Goodwin was set to take on a new role running global health policy for the World Health Organization after leaving the hospital in New York.
The final two episodes of New Amsterdam, titled "Right Place" and "How Can I Help?" aired back-to-back on NBC on Jan. 17, and saw all of its doctors off with promising conclusions.
For newly divorced doctors Iggy Frome (Tyler Labine) and Martin McIntyre (Mike Doyle), a do-over first date of roller skating — where the two confessed their fears of trying their relationship (again) only for it to fail (again) — ultimately gave way to a happy re-marriage ceremony surrounded by their kids and officiated by Gladys (Megan Byrne).
For Dr. Lauren Bloom (Janet Montgomery), finding a fixer-up new apartment signaled a new beginning all her own, and a future she was ready to (literally) design for herself. And, as she'd always hoped, she was reunited with her sister Vanessa (Kathryn Prescott) when the latter finally decided to get help for her addiction.
Dr. Floyd Reynolds (Jocko Sims) spent all five seasons in search of love and family — and realized he may have found what he was looking for in nurse Gabrielle (Toya Turner), even though she was heading off on assignment to Tanzania. But love appeared to win the day for him as well, as a flash forward showed him and Gabrielle at a cheery family dinner full of laughter.
As for newly minted couple Goodwin and Dr. Elizabeth Wilder (Sandra Mae Frank)? In the wake of Wilder alerting Goodwin that his brand new cancer cure was a "sham," the pair discovered that Max's ex-fiancée, Helen Sharpe (Freema Agyeman) — who departed the series after the fourth season and only appeared very briefly in the final season (and never actually interacted with any characters directly!) — had been the one to green-light the trial despite obvious problems with the experiment.
When Sharpe had signed off on the drug, she had hoped at the time that an expedited, if unethical, research plan and non-diverse sample group would quickly yield a cure that might work for Goodwin's cancer, too.
Wilder explained all of this to Goodwin, who was overcome with emotion at the realization. The two concluded that, while Sharpe made her decision out of love, neither of them would do the same for the other. But, maybe, being "doctors first" is what makes them a "perfect match," instead.
As for their happy ending, Wilder first had to prove instrumental in saving the life of a Ukrainian immigrant who came into the emergency room with her son. The woman presented with a horrible, bloody rash and abdominal pain, and after Goodwin nailed the complicated, two-part diagnosis, nearly every surgeon in the hospital — including Daniel Dae Kim's Dr. Cassian Shin (from season 3!) — joined forces to perform a more than 14-hour surgery to save the woman's life.
Meanwhile, a new, seemingly nameless medical director of New Amsterdam made her debut, a little sweaty from her commute, and unable to locate any of her doctors...
The finale also played heavily on the New Amsterdam rallying cry of "How can I help?" as it showed a flashback for each main character to the moment they realized they wanted to become a doctor.
Bloom, who'd clearly become a wealthy star in the finance world, made the decision when a homeless man experienced a medical emergency in front of her, and she didn't know how to help him.
Reynolds, ever the talented surgeon, realized he was good at putting things back together again after a fight between his parents left a plate broken and his mom upset. Reynolds repaired the dish and his mom's spirits.
For Frome, his older brother reframed his feelings of invisibility when he explained that Iggy was "like a rock," and that's why people felt safe opening up to him and sharing their innermost thoughts.
And, in Wilder's case, a group of mean girls on Halloween who bullied her for dressing as a doctor with a stethoscope despite her being deaf only bolstered her commitment to become a doctor for real.
Back in the operating room, after Reynolds performed surgery on the woman's heart in the final stage of the procedure, all seems to have succeeded — that is, until alarms started signaling something had gone terribly wrong.
Wilder jumped into action, slicing the woman's chest back open after she'd just been stitched up, ignoring Goodwin's cries to stop. Using a pair of forceps, Wilder extracted the tiniest piece from the woman's organs, stopped the alarm bells, and stitched the woman back up.
Thanks to nothing short of a herculean effort from New Amsterdam, the woman survived.
Following the surgery, Goodwin and Wilder shared a final moment together, appreciating that what they'd had was "real," but recognizing their careers had set them on separate journeys. Still, Goodwin remained optimistic that their paths would cross again in the future.
And then, finally, Goodwin located his daughter, Luna, all dressed up in her mermaid costume with nowhere to go, for her mermaid parade outing with dad had been shelved when Goodwin was, very thematically, called in to help.
As the show drew to a close, Goodwin scooped his daughter up, and some of the final scenes were shown through little Luna's eyes, sleepily watching the doctors milling around, as her dad carried her out of New Amsterdam.
And that new medical director arriving for her first day? In a sweet twist, she turns out to be Luna Goodwin herself, all grown up, and ready to carry on her father's legacy.
"New Amsterdam didn't take my father away from me. This hospital gave me my father," she told her new team of doctors.
"That was the day I realized I wanted to be just like him. That was the day I knew I wanted to be a doctor," she shared, referencing the day she missed the mermaid parade, but watched her father unite the hospital to save a life.
The final line of the series felt like coming full-circle, then, as Luna added: "I wanted to start by asking you the same thing my father asked his staff, every hour of every single day: how can I help?"
