Everything Fans of 'The Resident' Need to Know About the Long-Awaited Time Jump
Published Nov. 2 2021, 3:48 p.m. ET
Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for those who aren't caught up with The Resident.
Television shows love changing things up, so now that The Resident has teased a time jump in Season 5, fans are more than willing to jump on board. It’s been a tough year for the Chastain doctors in The Resident between the COVID-19 pandemic and the death of Nic. So that’s part of why the showrunners decided that it’s time to jump forward in time.
That’s right — like some of our favorite fantasy shows and the end of Harry Potter, the medical drama The Resident is taking on a time jump. But what exactly does that mean for the Chastain doctors and how will it affect the rest of the series?
The main reason there’s a time jump in ‘The Resident’ is to move past Nic’s death.
There are going to be a lot of changes in Season 5 of The Resident, but that wouldn’t be possible if the characters were stuck grieving the entire season. So in order to give an iota of realism to the characters’ stories, the showrunners knew they needed to jump ahead in time so that there could be further character development beyond grief.
“Any man who loses the love of his life and the mother of his 9-month-old baby — that’s a long recovery,” showrunner Peter Elkoff explained to TV Line in October 2021. “That kind of grief is not an instantaneous recovery. You don’t put that past you. We felt like having to do that, in real emotional time, would be dark. We didn’t want to have Conrad grief-stricken for an entire season of television.”
According to Peter, the time jump is about “three years and change,” so Conrad’s baby, Gigi, is now a toddler. “[Conrad’s] able to be a whole, happy person in pursuit of his life and the raising of his daughter and figuring out what matters.” Now Conrad and the rest of the team can move forward, build new relationships, and even meet new people.
There are a lot of changes caused by the time jump in ‘The Resident.’
In the promo for Episode 6, the first full episode after the time jump, we get a sneak peek of “Kitbell,” the new relationship between Kit and Bell that fans have been asking for. Although we know that they’re finally happening as a couple, we still don’t know how it all went down. But Peter and the team were careful not to make too many changes.
“It’s always good to shake things up four, five, six years into a show with a very loyal audience and give them something new — but not so much that you knock them off the train and they’re like, ‘Whoa! I don’t recognize this,’ Peter explained. So they deliberately went only three years ahead instead of something drastic, like seven.
There are also going to be some new characters. Peter teased, “When we get to Episode 6, a new character shows up who I think will really startle the audience in an excellent way. In Episode 7, too, we have a new character coming on who’s going to really turn the hospital upside down in an excellent way.” But that’s not all that’s going to happen.
In Episode 6, we’re sure to be shocked. “There’s one character whose circumstances will definitely surprise the audience. It will elicit very strong feelings from people.” Luckily, we don’t have to wait too long to see which character gets the big change, but we have some guesses.
Tune into The Resident Tuesdays at 8 p.m. EST on Fox.