TRANSPLANT Post-Mortem: Hamza Haq on the Hospital Shakeup and Bash and Mags’ ‘Vulnerable,’ ‘Emotional’ Moment

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the TRANSPLANT season 2 finale.]

TRANSPLANT’s second season came to an end with big shakeups happening at the hospital.

After spending much of “Free For What” trying to save the other’s job, Bash (Hamza Haq) and Bishop (John Hannah) finally came to an amicable resolution: Bishop threw himself on his sword and saved Bash’s job—with Bash receiving a three-year contract, giving him job security despite the official paperwork mishap.

But the news wasn’t all bad for Bishop, who received job offers to become a professor…in theory, allowing him to continue to teach the next generation of doctors.

With Bash now secure in his job, Haq admits things will change for the doctor, but only so much. “I don’t know if it equals a sense of belonging,” he explains in the video below. “I think that’s something that Bashir will continue to struggle with. I think it’s more an invitation to be the doctor that he was meant to be without this this Damoclean sword hanging over him.”

Next season, “we see a different version of him that is free of that fear of being ousted for that purpose,” Haq, who has already started filming season 3, previews. “Obviously, Bash is not a fan of the protocol and we see him get caught in the crossfire as of all of that. But I think his confidence and his esteem [gets] a bit of a boost and it’s uncomfortable for him, because it’s not a situation or it’s not a circumstance to which he’s accustomed…It’s been fun to do. It’s fun to play and I can only keep my fingers crossed and pray that it’s fun to watch as well. ”

But existing in the hospital for the first time sans Bishop—who was one of Bash’s closest allies—will bring its own challenges, too.

“It’s that shifting goalposts thing,” Haq admits. “You lose one safety net in Bishop, but you get the other one where now you don’t need him as much to fight those fights for you. There isn’t as much of, ‘I need to prove myself.'”

“It’s kind of like emancipation in that, alright, you have to be your own man now,” he continues. “And there’s both a fear and an excitement to do that. And I think the thing with with safety nets is that you can always rely on them, so when you don’t have it anymore, it’s fight or flight. And we’ve seen that Bashir is a fighter. So he’s going to do everything that he can to make sure he’s the ultimate version of the doctor that he wants to be.”

Also up in the air? If he’ll have someone by his side while he’s going through all of these changes. At the end of the finale, Bash went to see Mags (Laurence Leboeuf)—who is undergoing her own professional change, by deciding to switch residencies—at her home. After the duo said hello, and a beat passed, the episode faded to black. So what comes next?

“I think this drastic shift in both of their work circumstances and their personal lives gives them an opportunity to get to face each other in a way that they haven’t before,” Haq teases. “When he shows up to Mags’ door at the end,  it’s very emotional, it’s vulnerable. It’s filled with fear and excitement and all those things. That encounter does inform their relationship moving forward: how they speak to each other, how they work with each other, how they interact with each other at large. And it is an interesting evolution from what we’ve seen in the previous two seasons.”

Though the scene was brief, Haq praised it as being “up there amongst my favorite scenes that I’ve ever filmed, [and] not just on TRANSPLANT.”

“Not only as characters that Laurence and I are so attached to, but this storyline and everything that’s been happening—the growth of the show and having worked so closely together in that,” Haq notes. “To be like, here’s basically no words and we need you guys to experience the emotion that you have felt throughout the show, and how you feel about that. And to just be there with somebody and to just breathe with each other, and to look at each other and and tell an entire story that’s taken two years to tell and four years to film, so far. I think it was just so beautiful that it can be interpreted in any way out there.”

“But it was just such a gift to film that moment with Laurence, because it’s just one of those moments where nothing needed to be said,” he continues. “And I think we were both just present and and took that moment in for everything that it meant; all the versions that it could lead to, and all the ups and downs of what had happened and what could happen. It was just endless; it was like this eternal moment that the two of them had. And I think it was just a phenomenal way for it to close off the season.”

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• TRANSPLANT Exclusive Clip: Bash Tries to Work Out His Trauma in Therapy
• TRANSPLANT Stars Hamza Haq and John Hannah Preview Bash and Bishop’s Dueling Conflicts
• NBC Sets March Return for TRANSPLANT, WEAKEST LINK
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• TRANSPLANT Exclusive Clip: Can Bash Help His Friend Avoid Surgery?
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• TRANSPLANT Exclusive Clip: Bash Has a Heartbreaking Theory About a New Patient
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