The Knick Season 1 ending explained: Every character ends the season in jeopardy

The Knick season 1 finale episode had premiered on Friday, October 17, 2014, and ended with a major cliffhanger, setting the stage for the next season's events. The show is set in early 1900s medical reality and features a New York-based Nickerbocker hospital. The drama is infused by showcasing some unsafe, back-alley abortions, crude and often incorrect medical procedures. It also features incidents of poor drug regulation and reckless administration, along with unsanitary hospital environments.

The Knick season 1 doesn't have a happy ending; rather, every character ends the season in jeopardy, perfectly setting up for season 2. Cornelia gets Edward's child aborted, and the two lovers get separated, with her marrying Robertson. Edward and Thackery's conflict grows, and the latter is admitted to a rehabilitation clinic under the alias "Crutchfield". Read on to know the complete ending of The Knick season 1.

This is what happens by the end of The Knick season 1

The finale episode opens with Cornelia waiting on a dimly lit street amidst rain, and a carriage approaches in which she is surprised to see Cleary. Cleary takes Cornelia to a shabby apartment where Sister Harriet is waiting. Cornelia wants to abort the child she is carrying, and Sister Harrieta is the one who will be performing the abortion.

Harry again confirms to Cornelia if she wants it, putting forward an alternative of being a midwife by pretending that the child was conceived on Cornelia's wedding night. But Cornelia refuses. Harry concludes that the father is Dr. Edwards; however, no one takes the name explicitly.

Later, Edwards visits Cornelia at home, when Cornelia tells her that the abortion has been done. She emphasises that the child was theirs, but Edwards interrupts, reframing their entire relationship as a mere mistake. He predicts that one day, Cornelia will marry her fiancé, have his children, and they’ll both move on. Cornelia, on the other hand, tries to stop him, but he leaves her to face her marriage. When at the luncheon, Cornelia receives a pair of sapphire and diamond earrings from her fiancé's family, she realises that the cage around her is closing in.

In the season 1 finale of The Knick, Dr. Algernon Edwards finds himself pulled between professional duty and personal turmoil. He is burdened with all the surgeries by Dr. Thackery when he decides that he wants to beat Zinberg to the breakthrough and wants to focus only on research, hoping to secure one of the new Nobel Prizes.

The tension between them intensifies when Thackery barges into one of Edwards’ surgeries, ignoring proper sanitation protocols and interrupting to ask about blood coagulation. Edwards again reiterates how Thackery's behaviour is going absurd while the episode cuts to showcase Cornelia and Robertson's wedding. Edward, on he other hand, is seen being beaten up in the boxing ring, and this is how the two lovers get separated, leaving both of them in a state of profound loss by the end.

Thackery is admitted to a rehabilitation clinic under the alias "Crutchfield" in The Knick season 1 finale

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Thackery’s cocaine addiction reaches a point of no return by the end of The Knick season 1. He botches an experimental blood transfusion, prompted by his drug use, which results in the patient’s death. Following this, he’s admitted to a rehabilitation clinic under the alias “Crutchfield.” There, the so-called cure for his addiction is revealed to be heroin—a treatment that, while historically plausible at the time, is simply trading one dependency for another.

Gallinger, amidst all this, is emotionally devastated by his wife Eleanor's mental decline. In the finale, when he visits her, he learns that a psychiatrist has removed all her teeth, as he believes that mental illness stems from infection in the mouth. Gallinger is now emotionally shattered, continues to descend under the weight of personal tragedy.

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