The Good Wife finale ending: Robert and Michelle King explain

Warning: This story contains spoilers from the series finale of The Good Wife, which aired Sunday on CBS.

It’s safe to say Alicia didn’t get her happy ending on The Good Wife series finale Sunday, as she’s still feeling the sting of Diane’s hard slap when the last scene closes. Seemingly aware the conclusion raises more questions than answers — what happens to Alicia and Jason anyway? — series creators Michelle and Robert King are here to explain what happened.

“To talk about the end of the series is probably to talk about the beginning of the series because we started with this feeling that it should begin with a slap and end with a slap,” Robert explains in a video posted by CBS after The Good Wife wrapped Sunday.

Robert is referring to the slap Alicia gives her husband Peter (Chris Noth) — a Chicago politician she stood next to as he admitted his extramarital affairs — in the show’s first episode, long before she transformed into a top-notch attorney and independent woman.

“This show is about a woman who becomes more and more confident and more and more cunning and excited about her ability and also about power,” said Robert King. So that slap at the end is very similar to the slap in the beginning. We always had this idea of Alicia becoming more and more of something that she also was not liking in her husband.

Added Michelle King: “We had talked about that the victim becomes the victimizer, and that’s really the circle that we see of Alicia.”

“Michelle has always said the slap at the beginning of the series was like a slap that woke Alicia up,” Robert King said. “There’s a slap at the end of the series that wakes Alicia up a second time… Julianna [Margulies’] performance is so sensitive and really fills me with emotion whenever I see it. She is contemplating everything that came before. And so the question of what is the next stage in her life, is she going to take that into account, I think that’s also what we see in the ending.”

For more from the Kings — including why Alicia betrayed Diane — watch the clip below, and then share your thoughts on the finale in EW’s poll.