The Resident Recap: Season 5 Episode 19: Did Raptor’s Mom Die?

Raptor’s life completely changed during Tuesday’s episode of the inhabitant… and then he decided to change it up a bit.

During the emotional hour, Raptor said goodbye to his mother, Carol, who passed away after a long battle with cancer. And as the Chastain surgeon processed his fresh heartache and acute loneliness, he informed Leela’s sister Padma that he would like to be her sperm donor after all – provided he can raise the child next to her. (Padma and Leela’s shocked expressions were the only reactions we could see before the credits rolled.)

According to co-showrunner Peter Elkoff, Raptor’s sudden desire to father a child doesn’t have to be perceived as his way of avoiding grief for his mother. Rather, “we should think he’s really interested,” Elkoff tells TVLine, though he admits with a laugh, “if and when we get our sixth season.” [renewal]I can not tell you What That relationship would look like this – Raptor and a child!”

The EP adds that the loss of Raptor’s mother fitted well with Padma’s hopes of becoming a mother and allowed the show to explore what it means “when you lose someone… and you don’t have a love interest.”

“They’re looking for connection,” Elkoff elaborates. “You have to connect to something when you lose the last person in your family and it was during this time that Padma asked him to be the sperm donor for her child. This opens a much Storyline, lots of drama, lots of conflict that spills over into other stories in really cool ways.”

Elkoff says he’s proud of it, too the inhabitantApproach to Carol’s death that emphasized the benefits of palliative care and hospice care at the end of a person’s life.

“This was a deeply bonded mother and son, so we wanted to give it the emotional weight it deserves. But we also wanted to tell a story about how doctors deal with death differently than patients and non-doctors,” he explains. “We wanted to highlight what the reality of this journey is. While you know you’re dying, how do you do that? How do the people who love you feel about this? We wanted to make it realistic. We have really good doctors and consultants [on our writing staff]and I think we did it right.”