SPOILERS FOR ALL SEASONS OF HOUSE M.D
The end of the beloved House M.D. series is one that offers contentious debate, with some despising the direction the show went in the last two seasons, and others appreciating what they see as a wonderful ending to a great show. While the final two seasons of the series aren’t the best out of all eight, the decisions regarding how to bring the storylines and character development to a close were as great as any show could have done.
The House finale found what the true heart and core of the story was and gave that a resolution. While this resolution is devastating, it’s also beautiful. The relationship between House and Wilson, a colleague of the titular doctor, was the most crucial element of the series; in this relationship we’re able to understand these two characters and their development over the course of the show’s run.
House starts off the show as a misanthropic, selfish, drug-addicted doctor that seems uninterested in forming genuine connections with other human beings. He willingly uses those around him to get what he wants, especially Wilson. We’ve seen House indirectly get Wilson fired, indirectly kill Wilson’s girlfriend and overall give Wilson an immense amount of stress. That isn’t to blame House for Wilson sticking around for all of this, but to show that this relationship is tumultuous and toxic at best. As the series continues, we see various people come and go in House’s life: his fellows, Cuddy, Stacy. Yet Wilson is the only constant. Even when he does leave, insisting he’s done with House, he returns. The pair need one another; they quite literally can’t live without each other.
This selfishness that we see from House, which seems to be core to his character, is proven to be inaccurate in the finale. When Wilson discovers that he has cancer, House takes care of him through his first round of chemo, honoring his promise to Wilson that he won’t take him to a hospital, as Wilson’s biggest fear is dying in a hospital bed alone. In this episode we see a side of House we haven’t seen before: he’s genuinely terrified. In all other situations, with anyone else, House knows he can survive without them. But for the past couple decades he wired his brain to think that as long as he has Wilson, he isn’t alone. For the first time, he’s confronted with the reality that he’s losing the only person that matters to him, and it’s completely out of his control.
This lack of control sends House spiraling. Selfishly, House needs Wilson to stay alive, even if it’s miserable for him, because he can’t live without him. Wilson tries to tell House that there’s nothing he can do, that he is dying and the least House can do is be there for him. House may logically understand Wilson’s desire, but he refuses to acknowledge it.
Ultimately, Wilson decides to die on his own accord, and while it takes a lot of convincing for House to accept his decision, he does. It seems that everything House did wrong came back to bite him all at once, as he was due to return to jail after a stint that resulted in millions of dollars of damage to the hospital. This coincided with Wilson’s last five months, meaning if House went to jail, he would lose his best friend forever right then and there. Naturally, House fakes his death, only after spending hours weighing whether he should commit suicide. He does the selfless thing, however, and sticks around so he can spend Wilson’s remaining time with him.
This is a level of selflessness we don’t see from anyone else in the show. House sacrifices everything he values, not only in the world around him, but in himself. He believes he needs to be a miserable jerk to be of value as he figures that’s what makes him good at his job. In the finale, he chooses to sacrifice the only thing he thinks he has to offer: his ability to solve medical cases. He chooses Wilson.
House even states that “cancer is boring” — and in House’s mind, boring is the worst of the worst. He only spends time on cases he finds interesting, and yet he still chose Wilson (an uninteresting medical case).
Many shows try to give a satisfying ending, oftentimes sacrificing realism in the process of trying to give the characters a happy ending. House M.D doesn’t do this, opting instead to create a (relatively) realistic scenario in which House is finally confronted with the consequences of his actions, all while on the verge of losing the most important person in his life. The finale is able to show his development, which prior to this had been buried deep under the surface for only the biggest House apologists to desperately uncover.