Elsbeth Premiere’s Mystery Man, Revealed — and It’s Someone Good
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Elsbeth’s Season 2 premiere and looks ahead at Episode 2. Proceed at your own risk!
If the mystery voice at the end of Elsbeth’s Season 2 premiere sounded familiar while welcoming the titular lawyer into a black vehicle, that might be because it belongs to someone with ties to The Good Wife. Or maybe you just recognized it from portrayer Christian Borle’s many other TV roles.
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Borle appeared in five episodes of The Good Wife (and three episodes of The Good Fight) as Carter Schmidt, a lawyer who often went up against Alicia Florrick in the courtroom, and he also has a history with Elsbeth Tascioni. The official synopsis for next Thursday’s episode reveals that “Elsbeth’s day is turned upside down when she is reunited with a former colleague from Chicago.”
The introduction of Carter on Elsbeth lines up with what showrunner Jonathan Tolins told TVLine about the past coming into the present in Season 2. “At the end of Season 1, Matteo Hart says, ‘You can’t escape history,’ and we’re kind of building a little bit off of that,” Tolins said. “All three of our main characters, something comes back. They’re not the same thing, but they each have to deal with something that happened before the season began.” (For Kaya, the past came back in the form of the reveal that she’s missing two college credits, which was discovered by Captain Wagner’s strict new lieutenant, played by Billions’ Daniel K. Isaac.)
Executive producer Michelle King added that a little bit of the Good Wife mythology will come into play. “It’s things that maybe [Elsbeth] hasn’t wanted to think about too much, but they catch up,” King shared.
While the spinoff mentioned The Good Wife’s Cary Agos (played by Matt Czuchry) multiple times during Season 1, Carter marks the first on-screen guest appearance from a Good character. And now that the offshoot has established itself, the exec producers are feeling more comfortable about including characters from the Good Wife/Good Fight universe, something which they had previously been against.
“It is a very distinct, different type of show and different type of world,” King said, “and I think that’s why we were so strict in Season 1 of, no, it needs to be clear. This is its own world.”
Added EP Robert King: “But now that it is clear, there is the possibility.”
For Tolins, “it’s also a case of how comfortable [the actors] are. If they want to come, sure, I’m open to it,” he said.
Elsbeth fans, what did you think of the season opener? Grade it below, then hit the comments!
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