What Happened to Cuddy and Wilson?

Warning: Spoilers for House ahead!

House was full of shocking moments, but perhaps none as surprising as its series finale.

The critically acclaimed Fox drama premiered 21 years ago on Nov. 16, 2004. Hugh Laurie starred as the titular Gregory House, M.D., a Sherlock Holmes-inspired character who took on medical mysteries at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in New Jersey alongside his best friend, Dr. James Wilson (Robert Sean Leonard).

House was a diagnostic mastermind with a reputation as a cantankerous, narcissistic troublemaker and a Vicodin addiction.

His belief that “everybody lies” made the character memorable on- and off-screen.

“I think there is a basic comfort in clever people who know things,” Laurie told the Los Angeles Times in 2012, ahead of the series’ finale. “I think of House as a deeply moral character, though some would no doubt argue with me. He does not judge. Beyond his normal tetchiness, there were no more than a half-dozen moments of actual condemnation from him. He understood lies and also why you lied, and there was an absolution there that is very, very appealing.”

Over its eight-season run from 2004 to 2012, House and his team faced professional and personal trials and tribulations, including marriages, breakups, terminal illnesses, pranks, revenge and even jail time. All of these roller coaster moments led to the big finale — and one of the most surprising twists in TV history.

House didn’t end due to low ratings but because the show’s creator, David Shore, wrapped it on his own terms. In fact, the Emmy Award-winning series was so popular that while it was on air, it set three Guinness World Records, like Laurie becoming the most-watched leading man on TV. The British actor also scored two Golden Globe Awards and two Screen Actors Guild Awards for his portrayal of House.

“It’s a different kind of episode, but at its core I think it’s still a House episode,” Shore told Entertainment Weekly in 2012 of the series finale. “It’s still about a character looking to figure things out. We still have a medical case, but beyond that — that’s what they all are. The medical case allows us to explore the nature of the characters. It’s an ending.”

Here’s everything to know about the ending of House, as well as the titular character’s decisions in the show’s final moments.

How did House end?

On “Holding On,” the penultimate season 8 episode of House, Dr. Eric Foreman (Omar Epps) surprises House with hockey season tickets, which House flushes down different toilets throughout the hospital.

The prank inadvertently backs up the entire hospital sewage system, destroying an MRI machine and causing a hospital-wide power outage. Authorities eventually find tickets with House’s name and fingerprints in an outdoor drainpipe, indicating that House will likely be charged with vandalism and return to jail.

The series finale, “Everybody Dies” — which winkingly rhymes with House’s favorite phrase, “everybody lies” — opens with House waking up in an abandoned, burning building surrounded by empty liquor bottles and drug paraphernalia. Next to him is a deceased man named Oliver (James LeGros), a heroin addict and patient of House’s. Throughout the episode, House hallucinates conversations with past characters, both living and dead.

In a flashback to before the fire, House urges Foreman to tell his parole board that he needs to be at the hospital for five months (the same length as Wilson’s life expectancy). After Foreman reluctantly agrees, House asks Wilson to take the fall for the flooding, but he refuses.

Later, Wilson and Foreman search for House after not hearing from him for days. At House’s apartment, they check his phone and see he called his psychiatrist, Dr. Darryl Nolan (the late Andre Braugher). Wilson and Foreman then interrupt one of Nolan’s therapy sessions, and Nolan hints that House may have relapsed.

After the two learn that Oliver is also missing from the hospital, they locate Oliver’s address to try to track him down, convinced that House may have gone with him to score heroin. What Wilson and Foreman find nearby is an abandoned building, and they see what appears to be House in the structure’s doorway. Moments later, the building explodes.

The next day, House’s team arrives at the site of the fire and debates whether he survived. Dr. Chi Park (Charlyne Yi) remains optimistic, but Dr. Chris Taub (Peter Jacobson) notes that firefighters removed a body from the property. Later at the hospital, a coroner confirms that House died in the fire, as he had identified the body with dental records.

At House’s wake, various people take turns speaking about the impact he had on their lives and careers, including Wilson, Dr. Robert Chase (Jesse Spencer), Dr. Allison Cameron (Jennifer Morrison), Thirteen (Olivia Wilde) and House’s wife, Dominika (Karolina Wydra).

Wilson’s eulogy starts with praise for House as a healer but ends in fury, noting House’s tendency to “mock” everyone and his “insane quest for truth.” As he concludes his speech, calling House “selfish,” Wilson receives a text in all-caps that reads, “Shut up you idiot.”

The scene flashes to Wilson pulling up to his apartment, where House is sitting on the front steps. House admits to Wilson that he switched dental records with his dead patient before escaping through the back of the building. He came up with the plan to fake his death to avoid going to jail for the hockey ticket prank and instead spend time with Wilson, who is dying of terminal cancer.

“You’re destroying your entire life. You can’t go back after this. You’ll go to jail for years. You’ll never be a doctor again,” Wilson says.

House quips, “I’m dead, Wilson. How do you want to spend your last five months?”

In the following scenes, viewers get a glimpse of the diagnostic team’s futures: Chase is now the head of the Princeton-Plainsboro diagnostics team, overseeing Park and Dr. Jessica Adams (Odette Annable). Taub is seen out to dinner with his estranged wife, Rachel (Jennifer Crystal Foley), their daughters and his girlfriend Ruby (Zena Grey). Cameron works in an emergency room, where she’s spotted looking at a photo of her time with House and the diagnostic team before her husband comes to pick her up with their baby.

Meanwhile, Foreman is still the head of Princeton-Plainsboro, and he finds House’s hospital staff ID under the leg of his office table, which leads to a knowing chuckle.

In the final scene of the series, House and Wilson ride motorcycles together into the sunset.

Who did House end up with in the end?

House ends up with Wilson, his best friend.

“Ultimately, it’s House making a sacrifice — and yet not making a sacrifice,” Shore told Entertainment Weekly in 2012. “It’s House being with the person he should be with, in some ways.”

Shore added, “It’s not too sweet because it’s Wilson dying and House screwing everything up — and yet it’s Wilson and House riding into the sunset. And it’s House assessing his whole life for 40 minutes before that, which allowed us to bring back guest cast. It just felt like the right tone and the right story.”

Why didn’t Cuddy appear on the House finale?

Dr. Lisa Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) was one of House’s main love interests and played a major role on the series from seasons 1 through 7.

When asked whether Edelstein was approached to make a cameo on the series finale, Shore told EW, “I wanted her to come back, but we weren’t able to make that happen.”

In 2011, Deadline reported the actress left the series due to contract disputes after she and another cast member were reportedly asked to take pay cuts for the final season.

Why did Wilson have five months to live?

Wilson is diagnosed with stage II thymoma, a rare form of cancer of the thymus gland, located behind the breastbone. Wilson first reveals his diagnosis to a stunned House on the season 8 episode “Body and Soul.”

On the following episode, “The C Word,” Wilson’s oncologist recommends radiation therapy before surgery to avoid overburdening his immune system, noting that Wilson, the head of the oncology department at Princeton-Plainsboro, had previously suggested the same treatment plan to his own patients.

Wilson rejects the plan, saying that because his cancer has metastasized, he wants a more aggressive combination of radiation and chemotherapy. Both Wilson and House tell Wilson’s doctor that he has no “balls.” Wilson later consults with four other doctors, who all recommend radiation followed by surgery.

When House discovers that Wilson is planning to administer his own chemotherapy treatment in such a high dose that it may be lethal, he initially argues against it, telling Wilson he’s an idiot and is going to kill himself. However, he then agrees to help administer Wilson’s chemotherapy at his apartment.

“I honestly did not see that coming,” Laurie told the L.A. Times in 2012. “It’s such a lovely declaration of love and companionship. I thought House would just walk away at that point, but when I read it, I realized ‘No, this is what he would do.’ Logical, yet surprising.”

At the conclusion of the next episode, “Post Mortem,” it’s revealed that the aggressive treatment failed.

House tries to convince Wilson to undergo radiation and surgery, but Wilson says he would rather live for five good months than for several years in and out of hospitals.

What happened to Wilson at the end of House?

When Wilson’s aggressive chemotherapy treatment fails, he chooses to live out his final five months with House instead of undergoing radiation for his cancer and surviving for a few more years. The pair travel together on motorcycles after House fakes his own death.

Leonard later reflected on the on-screen friendship between House and Wilson.

“People say, ‘Why is my character friends with him?’ And I say, ‘Why do you watch him?’ ” Leonard told The New York Times in 2012. “He’s antisocial; he’s brilliant; he’s frustrating; he’s irreverent; he plays jazz piano; he drinks bourbon; he’s very wise. What’s not to like?”

Did Foreman know House was alive?

At the conclusion of House, Foreman is still the dean of medicine at Princeton-Plainsboro.

After House’s funeral, Foreman finds House’s ID holding up a table leg he’d previously been trying to fix. When he laughs to himself over the discovery, the implication is that Foreman knows House is alive.

While Foreman may not have known at the time of the fire and memorial, it seems he eventually catches on to House’s antics.

Did Cuddy go to House’s funeral?

Cuddy didn’t attend House’s funeral, as Edelstein didn’t return for the series finale.

On the season 7 finale, House drove a car into Cuddy’s living room while she was inside with her family, including her baby.

Edelstein told TVLine in 2015 that she thinks her character’s exit from the series was reason enough for Cuddy not to have returned to eulogize House after his death.

“I don’t think that show was about happy endings. And the truth is, if someone drives a car through your living room, you should do what I did and get the f— out of town,” Edelstein told the outlet.

She added, “He drove a f—— car through her living room. With the baby and family inside. That’s crazy. You file a police report and you leave — and you don’t come back for the f—— [series] finale.”

Is there a House spinoff?

There haven’t been any spinoffs or reboots of House, but Laurie did play a doctor again on the Hulu series Chance.

Like House, the title is Laurie’s character’s last name, but the similarities pretty much ended there. Laurie portrayed Dr. Eldon Chance, a forensic neuropsychiatrist who got caught up in a criminal underworld after making an error in judgment regarding one of his patients. The thriller premiered in October 2016 and ran for two seasons.