Good Wife: Jeffrey Dean Morgan didn't like finale

Jeffrey Dean Morgan certainly had an interesting spring. The actor proved his incredible versatility by playing two completely different characters on two completely different shows. But those shows — The Walking Dead and The Good Wife — did have one thing in common, as Morgan found himself part of the year’s two most controversial finales.

Much has been made of The Walking Dead season finale cliffhanger that forced fans to wait six months to find out who was on the receiving end of Negan’s bat, but The Good Wife series finale also came under fire for not offering any sense of closure for Julianna Margulies’ character Alicia Florrick, especially when it came to her budding romance with Morgan’s charismatic investigator, Jason Crouse.

Turns out viewers were not the only ones who were not fans of the move. Morgan also admits to being frustrated with the end result, which featured Jason seemingly having had enough of the Florrick family circus, not returning Alicia’s phone calls, and moving on (perhaps physically, if that was indeed him — and not a cleaning guy — waiting and walking away in the wings at Peter’s final press conference).

The actor chats with us about why he didn’t like the ending, reveals how he was unable to return for planned reshoots, and considers whether he thinks Jason and Alicia eventually do end up together, regardless of what we saw in the finale.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: So what did you think of The Good Wife ending with Jason and Alicia not ending up together?

JEFFREY DEAN MORGAN: I didn’t like it. But it’s not my show, you know what I mean? If Julianna was happy, then I was happy. My feeling was we raised so many questions about Jason and this relationship that he had with Alicia that I felt like nothing was ever answered, you know? So I walked away frustrated for my character and Alicia’s character in not having any kind of closure with that.

That being said, I haven’t seen the last episode — I only read it. I went immediately to work. I don’t watch a lot. I know that I got a call two weeks later after we wrapped and I was already in Atlanta, and they were like, “We want to do a little bit of a reshoot,” and I couldn’t do it. I was like, “I film tomorrow,” so there’s no way I could get back in. I don’t know what that would have consisted of. I don’t think anything that would have changed the story dramatically or anything.

I like that it kind of brought her back to beginning — that slap —and it was a kind of a role reversal there. Selfishly, I would have liked to see Jason and Alicia have some sort of answers for the audience and themselves. So I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.

People loved that couple so much and then it looks like he maybe just took off. Maybe that’s just in his nature, I guess?

Do we even know that he took off?

No, I guess we don’t. We assume.

We don’t know. We think maybe he took off and she’s looking for him at the end. I don’t know. I was so big on that story that got introduced so early on about who this guy was, and did he really beat up a judge? And what about this temper that they built up so much? And then nothing. It was just sort of walked away. But I tell you, I loved working with her and my favorite episodes were — I don’t know what they were, probably 15, 16, whatever — the episode that we fell in bed together and that kind of stuff where you saw not only Alicia kind of open up in a way that you hadn’t seen her in seven years, but you also found out a little bit more about the Jason character.

But all my stuff is all selfish. I wasn’t happy with the ending because I wasn’t happy with Jason. So that’s not a very fair assessment for the audience or for [creators Michelle and Robert King], who are obviously brilliant. They had an idea how this show was going to end and I guess we saw what it was.

Do you think he ever comes back to her?

I think so. I think if she was out looking for him, if it left on her chasing him down the hallway and she sees his silhouette and she goes chasing after him and runs into Diane, and she’s trying to get him on the phone — my feeling is that Jason would have picked up that phone and would have gone and scooped her up. That was always my feeling. I would have liked to have seen that, but who knows? Who knows?

I mean, a show like that that’s been on the air and kind of on the top level for so long, to end like that maybe it’s totally apropos, you know? The Kings know what they’re doing. I can’t say anything bad about them. I just wished for Jason and Alicia there would have been some sort of a closure there.

You build up all season this relationship and you see her kind of evolve from what she has been for six years and you kind of saw this other side of her. To just have it end so abruptly like that with no answers, it was hard for me reading it. I remember reading it, I put it down, I ran into work, and I saw Julianna and I was like, “What the f— is this?” And she’s like, “I had to read it like, 10 times. I think I get it. I think I understand what we’re trying to do here,” and I’m like, “Let me know because I don’t know.”