It’s been over two years since The Resident was canceled after six seasons on Fox, a decision that came months after the finale aired. Fortunately, executive producers Amy Holden Jones and Andrew Chapman had crafted the Season 6 finale to also serve as a series ender in case.

“There was a lot good in that last season,” Jones tells TV Insider. And Chapman agrees, adding, “I was pretty proud of that finale, given that it both served as a potential season ender and a potential series ender at the same time. It kind of worked.”

But there were so many stories that could have still been explored if the show had gotten a seventh season. And since we’re still wondering what we could have seen, we turned to co-creator Jones and executive producer Chapman for answers. Read on for the scoop (and stay tuned for more).

When we talked about the finale, you said you wrote it to serve as a season and series finale. What would’ve changed about it if you had been picked up for a seventh season by then?

Amy Holden Jones: We had to assume we might be [picked up], so we were trying to create a finale that would work if we weren’t picked up as an end of the show, but would work as a beginning and as a launching pad after that. So I don’t think we would’ve done anything different. I mean, we set up a whole bunch of stuff to explore, the new relationship with Conrad [Matt Czuchry] and Billie [Jessica Lucas], and we put the hospital in a financially more stable place at the end so that we wouldn’t be continually dealing with the money issues because we’d done an awful lot of that.

I think we were already considering jumping time again, even if we’d gotten the seventh season, and that would certainly work if it had been rebooted now also. And that was partially to get into a different phase of their lives. At the end, they were all having kids and pairing up, whereas at the beginning they were all singletons. That left us open to changing the soap part of it, more of the story of how doctors with families go on and how these people who were unattached and exclusively their whole lives was their work, how do they cope with it, which is an issue with doctors. Their lives are so all consuming.

For example, it would be very interesting to see what it was like if AJ [Malcolm-Jamal Warner] had 4-year-old twins, and what had happened with him and Padma [Aneesha Joshi]. We’d laid the groundwork to question whether there would eventually be a relationship there and whether they would try to be a relationship there because they have in common these children that no one else has in common. In the ideal world, we would’ve brought Mina [Shaunette Renée Wilson] back if we could because that would be such a wonderful complication to see how AJ was trying to make it possible with Padma, but then Mina shows up and that’s the love of his life and Mina’s not somebody you picture as a mom.

Andrew Chapman: It’s very hard to know if an actor’s going to come back at all at the end of their contract. Their contracts usually are six or seven years and we were at six seasons and some of them renegotiated, but contracts don’t always mean a whole lot. A lot of them can leave or decide to go onto other stuff or come back and want to be on the show forever.

Jones: That’s true. We’d lost some people, which were very sad, obviously to lose Emily VanCamp and very sad to lose Shaunette. But that’s not uncommon. People think we’d let them go and of course we did not let them go. … Had we gone the seventh season, the people we had then really loved making that show. The last episode was unbelievably emotional because we all knew it could be the last, and both the cast and crew were really, really hopeful it would come back and very nostalgic for what they’d had together. I did a lot on features and the other television stuff, and it was the happiest cast and crew I’ve ever seen. So I think they would’ve come back.

You left Conrad and Billie with “I love you” after quite the journey to get them together. Would they have gotten married? Would they have talked about if they need to? Would that have been addressed?

Jones: We were going to jump time and have them married and then see the marriage in flashbacks. It was such a slow burn to get to Billie that I don’t know how much more you could have taken. And we kind of missed what we had in the last years with Emily, which was this really stable, loving couple at the core who were kind of the rock that everybody else was compared to, and the threats came from outside from health issues or family issues that they had to face together. I have a friend who says that the only shows she watches are ones where a group of people are all working together for the same goal, like FBI and our show and Slow Horses.

The conflict between characters has to be there, but it’s not that much with our show because they were a very united team by that time, so a lot of the conflicts had gone away, though I think there’s still plenty of room for them with — Cade’s [Kaley Ronayne] still there and her father’s [Andrew McCarthy‘s Ian] still there and he’s still got a lot of problems, and we were teasing her getting involved with Dr. James Yamada [Ian Anthony Dale].

I think that we were going to probably put Billie on a pregnancy journey, and will she have a child? And how fraught is that for her given how fraught it was with the first one? I don’t know whether that would’ve gone with her having that child and then we’d have that child or possibly an adoption story would’ve been interesting, too, for them if she was unable to have a child for some reason.

Speaking of Cade and James, I was surprised by how much I liked them together. I know they hadn’t been planned as a couple, but since they did work, with stable relationships elsewhere, would they have been the, do we want to be serious/is it casual one, or not because of the time jump?

Jones: We were thinking that she has a problem with commitment probably because of this fractured childhood she has and a lot of children of narcissistic parents — I was reading about this and it made me think of her — have a hard time making themselves vulnerable to love and to affection because they didn’t really get it, so they don’t know what it feels like. Instead, they just always take care of everything for everybody else. I think it would have been an off and on journey for her with him. We might have started it where, if we’d gone right away into the seventh season, yes, it would’ve turned into what started to be a real love story and then had those issues of, can she open herself up and be taken care of and loved in a way she never has been? That’s a real issue for children who have non-loving or narcissistic parents is they tend to be caretakers and take care of others and don’t know how to be taking care of themselves. And I think her father’s not going to be a perfect person ever, that he would go on being a problem, not necessarily with addiction issues, but narcissists don’t stop being narcissists. They’re narcissists all their lives.

Chapman: Ian Anthony Dale and Kaley Ronayne were so strong, so immediately jumped off the screen. They just felt like a couple that you could really invest in and you want the couple to be together and yet you’re kind of excited that they’re not and playing that whole thing, I think we would’ve run with that.

Jones: He’s a great leading man. We were just thrilled with him. I’m so sad we didn’t get to do more with him.

Would Ian have been able to continue to work at Chastain and remain sober? The stress of the job was a trigger for him, but we saw how much they needed someone like him.

Jones: I think it might’ve been interesting if he wasn’t able to and they had to kick him out, which a lot of times they don’t do. It’s an interesting dynamic to see in medicine as they spend all these years training someone and you have someone with his exceptional skills, to just let go of all of that training and all of that ability is really hard, so they go a long way to try to fix it. And in some cases they do but in a lot don’t. There’s such a high addiction level, the doctors, and there’s also temptation because the drugs are there all over the place. That’s why they have such high addiction and high suicide rates. Andrew was very interested in that storyline. You wouldn’t want to beat it to death, especially because we went through that with Nic and her father and how difficult it was with him, so you’d have to figure out, how you do it without stepping on that previous storyline?

Chapman: I would echo the idea that addiction as a storyline has its place, but you don’t want to see it too much, honestly. At least, I feel like you play a little bit and then you kind of let it go, either you’re better or not better and you’re out. It’s like seeing people feel guilty on television. You never want to see them feel guilty, you just want to just get past it, move on. Same thing with addiction.

Tom Griscom/FOX

The finale could have been a wrap-up for Bell (Bruce Greenwood) or we could have seen him move into a teaching role. And there’s Kit (Jane Leeves) and Bell’s relationship, which is so good, and continuing to see that. So with that time jump, what would we have seen for them as a couple and as individuals?

Jones: I think we’d try to keep him as we can. And I think that Bruce wanted to stay. This would be a big thing, that they all have kids, and it falls into a certain pattern. They all have issues with that. Billie has the adult son and then will she have another kid? And the thing with the twins and Sammie [Chedi Chang] would be 11, if we jumped time, Gigi [Remington Blaire Evans] would be 10. I sort of saw Kit and Bell as becoming like the grandparents on the show that you love, the ones that you all wish you had. They’re kind of a wish fulfillment couple and they would make wish fulfillment grandparents. The conflict for her might come from that daughter, she had a kind of fraught relationship with her daughter, which would bring her own grandchildren back into it. And of course Bell has Sammie as his granddaughter. So that  is a whole other world where you stop being just a singleton dating and having love affairs or living with somebody and suddenly you’re a parent. And it’s interesting how it goes into all of them and seeing how they all react to that is kind of interesting.

Chapman: Can you talk a little bit about Devon [Manish Dayal] and clinical trials and how that would affect Bell?

Jones: We felt that Bell would be in one of the clinical trials, which we would follow with Devon. And ultimately MS is actually something that can go into complete remission — I don’t know that it can be cured per se, but it can go in complete remission and clinical trials are making big progress in that area. So that would be a really interesting story to follow, what does happen is happening now with MS with clinical trials through Bell and I think his outcome would be good.

Chapman: Yeah, and I think the other thing we were thinking about with Devon would be, he’s a doctor/researcher and that he maybe, in his clinical trials, came across a drug or a solution that made him a ton of money and, especially if we jump time, he’s either got a ton of money or he’s on the brink of a huge windfall. That does happen to doctors and that could be really fun and really fun to see how that messes with his character and with his mind and see how he would go forward from that.

Jones: And we were going to use the wedding obviously of Leela [Anuja Joshi] and Devon. That was probably going to be the premiere. And so you’d open with the beginnings of it and end with the actual wedding. And if we did jump time like that — you have to get the network and studio’s approval — then we’d have flashbacks in it to Conrad and Billie’s wedding, which you wouldn’t have seen. And if it was real time, then it would have an effect on when are they going to get married and what would their wedding be. And that probably wouldn’t happen instantly because they just became a couple. So if you jumped time, it would’ve happened, but if you didn’t, then you could be building to that later on in the show, which would be lovely.

So we would’ve seen Bell back in the OR then after the trial?

Jones: But on a limited level.

Chapman: A little bit.

Jones: Semi-retired, I would say. I think we’d probably transition him into an oversight role of an executive role at the hospital supporting her and working emeritus. But also, there are non-medicine positions that doctors have in hospitals where they become supervisors of other doctors and deal with a whole bunch of other issues within the hospital. And that probably would’ve been good for him.

Guy D’Alema/FOX

You already said the plan if you had been able to bring Mina back, and I know for Cain, it was about not being able to get Morris Chestnut back. Andrew, you’d told me of the dark side of pharma storyline if you’d gotten him back for Season 5. If you’d been able to get him back for a Season 7, would you have tried to adapt that storyline or would you have done something different?

Jones: He might’ve come back if we’d done a Season 7 right away because he really loved being on the show and he was between stuff right at that point. In fact, I think I talked to him and he said he would come back. Of course, now it’s a different story, so it wouldn’t be the same. He’s got his own things going on, but Cain was such a great character. There were so many things we could do with him. I think he’d always be in conflict with Bell, don’t you think Andrew? They’d always be going at it.

Chapman: Also, Morris was just an incredibly lovely human being and also the most handsome man on the entire planet, so you can’t go wrong with that guy. You can make him bad, you can make him good. People are just going to love him no matter what.

Jones: You want to go full fantasy, it might be an interesting issue if Mina came back, she was attracted to him. … That would be hilarious. Poor Malcolm. But it would also be great to see what happens with Padma versus Mina.

Malcolm and Morris on screen together was so good…

Jones: I know, they loved it.

Chapman: They were great,

Jones: That scene where they go at it in the underground garage is one of the greats for sure.

Chapman: They were fantastic. Both alpha males who just wanted to butt heads…

Jones: But both of the nicest people in the world in reality.

The Resident, Complete Series, Streaming Now, Hulu and Netflix