New Amsterdam Finale Recap: Well, That Was Certainly A Cliffhanger

This New Amsterdam Episode 22 recap for the episode titled “Luna” contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on the previous episode by clicking these words.

So, that was certainly a finale, wasn’t it? Trust New Amsterdam to pull a last-minute tragedy out of nowhere after it finally looked like everything was going to be okay. It’s to be expected, of course; the show has already been renewed for a second season, and we have to make sure everyone tunes in when it returns. What better way to do that than to suggest the death of a major cast member?

At least one, as it happens, but we’ll get to that. Following on from last week’s cliffhanger, most of “Luna” was focused on Georgia’s life-or-death at-home birth of baby Luna, helped along by an incredibly rough-looking Max and a typically good-looking Lauren Bloom, who you’ll recall turned up last week to tender her resignation. So much for that!

This is all complicated by the fact that Max is still dying of cancer and Georgia needs an emergency caesarian section, only since she has lost so much blood already there’s every chance that she won’t survive it. With paramedics too far away to help, Max has to make a choice: Does he save his wife or his child?

In a fitting and emotional scene — probably this episode’s best — Lauren, recognizing that this isn’t the kind of choice Max can make himself, instead makes it for him. She whips out a carving knife and gets to work saving the kiddo, while Max looks on, distraught.

Georgia and Luna both survive, thanks to the efforts of Lauren and Helen, who arrived in the ambulance, and off they all pop back to the hospital, with old rivalries healed and things looking up. A happy ending, then? Not quite.

There are a couple of things going on elsewhere in this episode, one of which determines the out-of-nowhere ending, so let’s briefly check in on those. In a refreshingly positive segment, Floyd took Evie to meet his parents, where his mother approved of his new partner as a woman, but not as the woman for him. She isn’t a churchgoer, she’s a careerist; all things that don’t fit into Floyd’s comically old-fashioned vision of his future family. His mother won’t give him the family ring with which he was hoping to propose; later, his sister tries to sneak it to him, and he turns it away. Just when it looks like he won’t be proposing, he does anyway, without a ring, a plan, or the blessing of either family. He decides to go his own way, which was a nice moment, fitting for a finale.

An odd subplot in “Luna” was Iggy trying to get through to his latest client, which involved weird surrealist vignettes which didn’t necessarily fit the episode structurally or tonally but nonetheless made for some closing narration that I’m not entirely sure worked as well as everything else did. But no matter. Let’s get to that sneaky, seemingly go-nowhere subplot that resulted in the potential death of at least one major character. A high-flying lawyer admitted with several grams of cocaine in his stomach made a hasty getaway, stealing an ambulance on the way. And his escape route took him straight into the side of ambulance containing Max, Georgia, Helen, Lauren, and Luna, at high enough speed to tip the whole thing over.

So, who’s dead? Max and the baby seem fine. Georgia was left unconscious, but after spending most of the episode on death’s door only to be revived at the last minute, it seems silly to kill her off right at the end. And what would Max do without her? That leaves Lauren, who was found in a really bad way, and of course Helen, who wasn’t seen at all. At one point we got a glimpse of a paramedic pulling a white sheet over a corpse, though, so let’s just say things aren’t looking good for her.

I guess we’ll have to wait until next year. I’ll see you then.