Spoilers ahead for the Season 3 premiere of Transplant on NBC, called “Fracture.”
Transplant has finally returned to NBC for the third season in the 2023 TV schedule, more than a full year after Season 2 ended with Bash and Bishop coming full circle. The second season finale also ended on a cliffhanger with Bash visiting Mags at her apartment, and the two exchanged some significant looks… only for the credits to roll without showing what happened next. “Fracture” didn’t exactly show what happened, but the final scene between the two confirmed that they’re definitely not just friends anymore. Bash and Mags are officially a couple, and when I spoke with showrunner Joseph Kay about the premiere, he dropped some details that leave me hyped for the rest of Season 3.
“Fracture” was a rough episode for both Bash and Mags for most of the hour, with Bash running into obstacle after obstacle while trying to start practicing as a trauma surgeon again and Mags still settling into her work in the cardiac trial. He also had to spend most of the episode on edge about whether he and Amira could take the next step toward Canadian citizenship, all while Transplant avoided showing what exactly Bash and Mags were to each other. Luckily, the end of the hour showed them meeting up for a date, establishing that they’d been spending a lot of time in her apartment, and sharing a kiss.
Transplant creator and showrunner Joseph Kay spoke with CinemaBlend about Season 3, and he explained why now was the right time to finally make the jump into romance for Bash and Mags after two seasons of remaining friends:
We just feel that the two actors have this incredible chemistry and they can do a lot with very little and that was apparent from the very first time that they were together. We’ve seen the sort of ongoing will-they-won’t-they a lot and although the two actors could certainly have sustained it, we were as writers and producers just really interested in now letting it become a real thing and not continuing the silent friction.
Joseph Kay credited Hamza Haq and Laurence Leboeuf for bringing chemistry as Bash and Mags from the beginning, and I’m sure I’m not the only fan who will credit the Transplant team for not stringing the “will-they-won’t-they” dynamic out indefinitely. There’s no going back for the two characters now, which wasn’t the case when they were still skirting romance last season.
Of course, the Season 3 premiere proved that becoming a couple doesn’t mean that they’ll agree on everything professionally, and the showrunner confirmed that element of their relationship isn’t going anywhere. Kay continued:
Taking that energy – because they have chemistry, but one of the reasons they have chemistry is because they bump up against each other. They take different sides of the same issue, both as doctors and as human beings. They approach everything differently, even though they have this kind of karmic connection. We just wanted to see what that would feel like as a relationship, and it turned out that it was really great to write to, because it’s full of conflict. You always feel the chemistry and you feel this underlying closeness that these two have, but they’re always going to argue, and they’re always going to fight and have fun while they’re fighting.
A lot seemingly changed for Bash and Mags over the course of the brief time jump between the end of Season 2 and beginning of Season 3, but the friction to go along with their connection is still there. Given the huge smiles on their faces at the end of the premiere, it seems to be working for them so far! Joseph Kay concluded:
There’s a dynamism in that, that yielded a lot of fun. It just felt like the bold and organic choice to just [say] ‘Let’s just get these two together and see what happens.’ [laughs] And we had fun with it, and so did they.
Of course, this wouldn’t be Transplant if Bash was in for nothing but smooth sailing for the rest of the season, and I for one wouldn’t want it any other way after Joseph Kay’s previews about the rest of the season. The flashbacks to Bash’s traumatic time before arriving in Canada will continue, following some Season 2 flashbacks that Hamza Haq shared were “too gruesome” to air without reshoots.
Theo clearly hasn’t recovered from his ordeal with the helicopter crash as much as he’d like his coworkers to believe, and newcomer Dr. Devi has some struggles ahead as Dr. Bishop’s replacement in the emergency department. And as for Bash and Mags… well, the promo for Episode 2 of Season 3 indicates that trouble will be on the horizon for the duo. The course of true love never did run smooth when it comes to TV romance, and viewers are clearly in for some ups and downs.
New episodes of Transplant will continue airing on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on NBC, following reruns of Law & Order: SVU at 8 p.m. ET. If you want to revisit the first two seasons of the medical drama beyond this handy Transplant recap video, you can find them streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.