‘The Resident’ Co-Creator Promises You’ll Find Out The Fate Of Jessie & Kyle In Season 3 Premiere

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‘The Resident’ season 2 finale ended with a huge cliffhanger — Jessie or Kyle is on the verge of dying. HL spoke EXCLUSIVELY with the show’s co-creator about season 3, Nic and Conrad’s future, and more.

Just when Nic thought her sister and father were in the clear after Jessie’s kidney transplant and Kyle’s surgery nightmare, she found out that one of her family members was dying. In the final moments of The Resident season 2 finale, Nic watched as Conrad tried to revive her sister or father. Given the fact that both Jessie and Kyle were in similar rooms, you couldn’t tell who Conrad was working on. Talk about a cliffhanger to keep you guessing until season 3.

HollywoodLife talked EXCLUSIVELY with The Resident co-creator Amy Holden Jones about where the show goes from the season 2 finale. Season 3 will reveal the “ultimate outcome” of what happened to Jessie and Kyle. She also discussed how this intense family situation will impact Nic and Conrad’s relationship going forward. Check out our Q&A below.

Will we find out at the beginning of season 3 what happened to Jessie and Kyle?
Amy Holden Jones: Yes. You will find that out in the very first episode. You’ll find out whose room Conrad’s working in and what the ultimate outcome is.

Was there a discussion to make the reveal in the finale or had you always intended to leave it as a cliffhanger?
Amy Holden Jones: It was a discussion, yes. We went through a lot of iterations. We always knew that the last episodes were going to revolve around Jessie’s situation and the true element would occur in the form of Shira, the anesthesiologist, that would be the threat, a minor thriller element which actually becomes a major one. Who died was a discussion and the entire room all voted for the same person to die and I did not vote for that person to die. Who goes in the end is going to depend on our decisions for stories of next year. Even if one of those two patients does indeed die, there are a lot of possibilities. You can die and then live in another world, which is death, and you have to decide to let someone go or not. You can be in another world but come back or you can actually die in that moment. So it depends on the stories that we’re going to tell, and whoever does pass, that doesn’t mean they won’t be in the season because there’s also flashbacks and memories and things which will play through season 3.

So there’s definitely going to be one death? There’s going to be at least one confirmed?
Amy Holden Jones: No, I’m not going to commit to that either. They might both live. One might be a patient for a while, and then we have to deal with their recovery. So there are a lot of possible iterations.

How would you say that this is all going to impact Nic going forward?
Amy Holden Jones: This has a big impact on Nic going forward no matter what happens because let’s imagine Kyle dies. Nic is the one who brought him back and said it’s a low-risk surgery. She said, ‘I’ll see you on the other side.’ She just got the father back that she really wanted in I think one of the most emotional moments of the episode. Should he survive but be in jeopardy, the fight to save him still would remain. Should Jessie pass then it’s the two of them left together dealing with that. There are a lot of possible iterations. What happens actually has something to do with the plans for the season. There’s a lot of possible conclusions for this and they’re all good.

What about Nic and Conrad’s relationship? They do work together and he’s the one there when one of her family members is dying.
Amy Holden Jones: It’s not going to have a negative effect on their relationship. They’re back together now and that’s the way we see them. If one partner, however, has emotional struggles it’s going to affect the other and that is the story of the Conrad/Nic relationship. It’s the story over time of a really good couple and how do they weather the storms that we all weather in life. The Cinderella story is interesting but it always ends marrying the prince. You never see what happens after that. In real life, life goes on after the wedding, and/or whether the one they marry is ‘the one’ is an issue, too. Whether they have kids or not will be an issue. All of those things are in the future for them. I think it’s not shown enough on television how a truly good, strong, and loving couple still has to face hills and valleys and surmount them together. That’s the story of this relationship… It’s not the story of other people splitting them apart, which is the typical thing on television. When we introduced Alec, we read people to believe that that’s what it was going to be but it was never going to be that… We’ve already set the groundwork for how they can help each other in how Nic was with the Conrad-Marshall relationship. She was very supportive and at very crucial moments had him reexamine how he was relating to his father and helped him to reconnect with his father. So one hopes that whatever goes on that he’ll be that support for her as well.

The finale also featured Micah back in the picture and he has moved on. Will season 3 finally give us Mina and AJ?
Amy Holden Jones: No, they’re not going to become lovers in season 3. I can foreshadow that for you because their attraction is going to be there, no doubt about it, but both of them are very focused on work, and they both say that. AJ says that about finding his past and finding his mother that gave him up, that she put her work as a doctor first, and that it was hard for him to fall in love because he does the same thing. However, they will have stories and they will be there for each other on a more personal level than they have been in the past. He was there for her with the problems with her mother. She will be there for him as he explores the issues of finding his biological family. So their relationship will deepen and become more personal but don’t anticipate in the next season it going beyond that.

Have you discussed where season 3 will pick up?
Amy Holden Jones: We’re picking up where we left off for the first episode. I think it’s 9 episodes until the break of the season. We will probably jump time after the break to the second part of the season, and we’re anticipating at that point upping everyone in their categories, instead of the Grey’s Anatomy formula where I believe they were first-year residents for like 6 years. We’d like to advance Devon to being a resident and having interns of his own to see how he handles that situation. We wanted him to have a new intern or several to replenish the cast and to see those new problems. We’d like to see what happens when Conrad becomes an attending himself and so there will probably be a time jump in the second half of the season.