Nurse Jackie: Exec Producer on Jackie’s Fate and an Alternate Ending

Last night’s series finale of Nurse Jackie left viewers unsure of whether the title character lived or died. (Spoilers ahead.) Everything was looking rosy for Jackie Peyton but, at the party for her closing All Saints Hospital, she overdosed and it wasn’t clear if she’d survived or not.

For his part, executive producer and showrunner Clyde Phillips likes to think that she survived but the ending was left open on purpose. He told Variety, “I welcome that conversation (about the finale)… I hope the show will be talked about in a healthy way for a while after it ends.”

Phillips shared that Nurse Jackie was initially going to end very differently. There would have been a fire that breaks out in the ER in the finale. Jackie would have braved the flames to free an addict that had been handcuffed to a hospital bed in the basement.

It would look like she’d perished in the flames but viewers would then see her squeeze out of a tiny window — like a birth. She would start running down an alley, toward a crowd of staffers, but then she would decide to turn around and run the other way. She would be a free woman, able to start over.

Ultimately, it was felt that the blazing ending wouldn’t have focused enough on the character and her addictions.

While some fans may be sorry to see the series end, Phillips believes it was time. He said, “We’d played that out as long as we could… It was time for the show to end.”

What do you think? Do you think Jackie lived or died? Did you like the shows ending?