New Amsterdam is returning for its fifth and final season of Max “How Can I Help?” Goodwin doing everything he can to help those who come to his hospital in need, but the show isn’t coming back with everybody who was still around when Season 4 ended. Freema Agyeman left the show over the summer hiatus, which means the end of Sharpwin on fans’ screens on a weekly basis. Viewers will have to tune in to the premiere on September 20 to see how the medical drama explains the absence of Dr. Helen Sharpe, but one thing is already certain: Max has a healing journey in front of him, and Ryan Eggold opened up about it.
After executive producers David Schulner and Peter Horton revealed to CinemaBlend that Freema Agyeman originally might have left even earlier and they dropped clues during Season 4, they shared that the fourth episode of the season is called “Heal Thyself,” and that the idea of “heal thyself” is “a good theme” for Season 5. Ryan Eggold answered whether Max needed to focus on healing himself in light of how Season 4 ended, saying:
I think so. There was a beautiful speech that I got to deliver, that these guys wrote for Max, in that episode about healing thyself, and Max headlines, like, you know, 'How can we ever take care of anyone else if we can't take care of ourselves?' And I think yes. I think Max is figuring out how to heal, and how to proceed and how to get back to his mission of helping people. And that certainly involves your own healing as a part of that.
The future was looking very bright for Max during part of Season 4, when he and Helen moved to London and proceeded to get engaged. His idea of planning their wedding for her when she landed in New York in the finale was either extremely romantic or overwhelming, depending on how you looked at it. The heartbreak came when she called him and he realized that she didn’t get on the plane at all. It’s not clear yet how exactly New Amsterdam will explain her absence, but Max has some healing to do.
Luckily, even though he won’t have Helen in his life the way he did for the better part of a year, Max is back in New York with plenty of friends rather than more isolated in London. Of course, Season 4 ended on a pretty stressful note for more characters than just Max, as Bloom realized that money is always going to be a messy issue between her and Leyla and Iggy doubled down on what he said about Martin. Reynolds reconnecting with his father wasn’t quite as intense as what the others were going through, but he deserved a break from emotionally intense stories after everything he went through with Lyn and her pregnancy!
So, will the people around him be an asset to Max as he tries to heal from losing Helen? Ryan Eggold shared:
Oh my gosh, yes. I mean, in our first episode, we have this great montage where everybody's kind of supporting each other. It's this fun little support group of movie watching and like board games and having dinner. Because everybody at the end of Season 4, their life changed fairly dramatically. So yeah, that family, those bonds, those friendships are everything this season.
It’ll be sad to see Max without Helen after how happy Sharpwin were for a time in Season 4, but a support group montage of the remaining characters together may be just what viewers need as much as Max himself. Losing Helen doesn’t mean that the whole family of friends needs to fall apart, and it sounds like the Season 5 premiere will be a reminder of that as Max begins his healing process.
Tune in to NBC on Tuesday, September 20 at 10 p.m. ET to watch the fifth and final season premiere of New Amsterdam. If you want to revisit the end of Season 4, you can do so streaming with a Peacock subscription. New Amsterdam is only one of many big shows returning to the small screen in the coming days and weeks, so check out our fall TV premiere schedule to start planning ahead.
