‘Transplant’ Boss Joseph Kay Reveals Reason for Ending Medical Drama After Four Seasons (Exclusive)

Canadian medical drama Transplant will be premiering its final season on NBC on Thursday, and creator Joseph Kay spoke to PopCulture.com about why he chose to end it after four seasons.

After NBC acquired the rights for its U.S. broadcast, Transplant premiered in September 2020 to help fill the schedule during COVID.

The series officially came to an end in January 2024 on CTV in Canada, so the wait for the fourth season has been quite a long time in the U.S., as Season 3 aired in fall 2023 to fill the schedule during the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes. Now that Season 4 is finally here, fans will only have 10 episodes left to say goodbye to Bashir, Mags, Theo, and everyone else at York Memorial.

While four seasons doesn’t seem like a lot, that was actually the plan all along. Kay, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer, told PopCulture that four seasons was his “plan from the beginning.”

“He was the framework of the show. Bashir is redoing his residency,” Kay explained. “So I looked at that like a four-year residency, one of four seasons. We drop in on him for a month or two every year, and the show itself was framed as a brief window into this man’s life as he starts to put some of his past behind him. He obviously can’t put all of it behind him, so he starts to shed some of the weight of his past and prepare himself for a future, and to leave the audience knowing that this guy is going to be okay.”

“So that was the framework,” he continued. “And it never seemed as though if we went much beyond that, we would be repeating ourselves in terms of the stories we were telling about his past, and that it wouldn’t really do a disservice. It wouldn’t really do a service to the nature of the show to continue. And so although it was hard to walk away because it’s a great group of people who write the show, produce the show, act the show, we have the same group the whole time, over six years, through the pandemic. Although it was hard, we kind of held firm to the idea that this was important creatively, and we held to it. So, it was the plan, and we executed the plan, and it’s never too late to start again.”

As for how the final season will wrap up, Bash is “on the precipice of finishing his residency at York Memorial and officially requalifying as a doctor,” per the official logline. “With his future uncertain once again, Bash and his sister, Amira, are Canadian citizens now, but are still trying, with everything they have, to build a life in their adopted country.” Fans will have to tune in to see what happens, starting with a two-episode premiere on Thursday at 8 p.m. ET on NBC, streaming the next day on Peacock.