The fourth season of New Amsterdam delivered kinds of challenges that the doctors couldn’t have seen coming, ranging from Veronica Fuentes definitely not running the hospital like Max “How Can I Help? Goodwin to key characters being poisoned during karaoke night. Now, the Season 4 finale is set to feature a whole different kind of crisis, on top of the various revelations and decisions from the penultimate episode. Tyler Labine, who plays Iggy, opened up to CinemaBlend about his character’s “breaking point” ahead of the finale, as well as who will rise to the occasion in the face of a natural disaster.
Iggy’s personal life has been a disaster in some ways throughout Season 4, ever since he hired Trevor and got a little too close for comfort with the flirty nurse. He has had to deal with some consequences ever since Martin found out, but came to a conclusion in the penultimate episode that he has been “wounding” himself so that Martin could save him throughout their relationship. It was a major breakthrough for the last episode before the May 24 finale, and when I spoke with Tyler Labine on May 23, he weighed in on how his character assigns blame after turning things around on Martin:
I had just gone through a divorce. I was with my partner for almost 23 years, and what my personal belief and takeaway from all of it is, is that sometimes you reach a breaking point or a boiling over point, and you may not articulate things perfectly. Certainly just turning your finger directly at your partner and saying, 'It's you, it's not me!' might be a little bit abrupt and hasty. Maybe that wasn't even how he thought it was going to come out until he was in that moment, you know, face to face with his partner. But there is something wrong there. It's a two-way street always. People don't just wake up and go, 'Know what I'm gonna do today? I'm gonna destroy my marriage.' Like, there's been things missing, hence trying to adopt the baby from Season 1 without telling his partner. Even at that moment, I was like, 'Oh, there's some stuff here that we're not seeing.' Like, you don't just do that.
According to the actor, Iggy’s harsh words that sounded “abrupt and hasty” weren’t premeditated to hurt Martin, and they didn’t come out of nowhere, even though fans haven’t seen all the buildup over the years. There have certainly been issues and dramatic twists for the two characters, and those have officially led somewhere. Labine continued:
There's needs not being met. I'm not blaming anything on anyone, Iggy or Martin. Sometimes people just aren't really communicating properly and aren't compatible in that moment. And then all along the way, there have been these questionable actions by Iggy, but again, that's all we see. We only ever see Martin in a position of supporting Iggy. We never see when he's supporting Martin. We don't see any of the mistakes or any of the things before we met these two that have happened. We don't know how their relationship has gotten to where it is when we first met them. So I'm trying to just rely on that and be like, 'Well, look, from the beginning, Iggy has been sort of wriggling his way out of this seemingly very, very supportive relationship. There's got to be a reason.' There's got to be a reason, especially for someone who's as logical, I think, as Iggy, and it's making him seem like a lunatic. He looks like a lunatic. So that's what my take is.
New Amsterdam hasn’t revealed every key moment in Iggy and Martin’s relationship to fans, taking place before or during the span of the show. Even if Iggy receiving a sweater and then coming to a world-shaking realization about his marriage may have seemed like a very quick leap in the penultimate episode of Season 4, Labine’s take is that there’s a logical reason. He elaborated:
I think that we are seeing one part of the whole story, and it's not a nice part. It doesn't look very good. And like I said, sometimes when things come up, they're not completely formulated or articulated the way that you want them to be. They're said in the moment of anger or passion or something, so I think we have to give them time and Iggy time, which we have a whole season break. Well, that's not true. I guess we still have [the finale] tomorrow. But there is time for them to formulate what they actually are feeling, you know?
Based on the actor’s words, fans shouldn't interpret Iggy’s comments about the sweater to mean that the end is 100% nigh for his marriage to Martin. That’s not to say that everything will end happily ever after for them in Season 4 or that their marriage will survive in the long run, but there’s more to the story than we’ve seen so far. As Labine noted when we spoke on the day before the finale, there’s still time for them.
And it’s safe to say that the finale isn’t going to spend the whole hour on Iggy and Martin’s issues, although they’ll certainly have a part to play. The promo reveals that a hurricane is hitting the hospital, complete with windows shattering from the wind, hallways collapsing, and the power going out. I asked Tyler Labine how the characters rise to the occasion – or don’t rise to the occasion – with the hurricane crisis, and he previewed:
It's funny, you mentioned 'not rise to the occasion,' because I'll just say this without giving too much away. How do I say this without spoiling anything? There's a call to arms and Iggy steps up. Let me just put it that way. There is a very real need at the hospital for someone to to step up into a new position and Iggy agrees to do it, and it ends up being way more than he ever thought he was agreeing to but kills it. Things go well for Iggy. But yeah, there's definitely a new color that is seen in tomorrow's episode. And as far as Martin and Iggy, without giving anything away there, there's new clarity. I'm not going to say anything other than that. There's clarity that comes to light for those two.
Iggy is obviously very capable in his field of psychiatry, but doesn’t exactly handle the most action-packed crises compared to doctors like Bloom and Reynolds (both of whom have had their own issues in Season 4). He’ll step up when there’s a “call to arms” in the finale, although he may not have fully comprehended just what he was stepping up for. In fact, based on a clip for the finale, Iggy got the job because nobody else wanted to take it. Check it out:
The Season 4 finale of New Amsterdam airs on Tuesday, May 24 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC. It’s clearly going to be a stormy episode that may or may not end well for Iggy and Martin’s marriage, but the skies could be looking clear for Max and Helen reuniting in New York… assuming that her flight makes it across the Atlantic in spite of the storm and she's not stuck in London. All signs point toward a must-see hour of TV, so be sure to tune in! For some viewing options during the wait for the fifth and final season of New Amsterdam, check out our 2022 TV premiere schedule.
