Six Things You Need to Know about the Final Season of The Mindy Project 

Warning: Spoilers for The Mindy Project Final Season

TV shows coming to an end is an inevitability. It’s okay when it’s a series you don’t care about but when it’s one you’ve grown attached to, it can be a difficult process of letting go.

You want your drama or comedy to end strong, you don’t want it to overstay its welcome. But you’re also not looking forward to the day when the only way you’ll be able to enjoy it is by watching and rewatching (or bingeing and re-bingeing) classic episodes.

For three seasons The Mindy Project ran on FOX. When the network cancelled the Mindy Kaling, well, project, Hulu picked it up. And for the last two years, it’s populated the streaming universe.

Starting today, the comedy kicks off its sixth and final season. A good thing that can be said about this impending departure is the show is going out on its own terms.

“The decision to end the show when we did was our decision. I think that’s always very hard when you love working — we love working at Hulu,” Kaling stated in July at the Television Critics Association’s Summer Press Tour. “The team, our crew and the cast, we are so tight and love each other, we’d think, like, ‘God, should this be the end?”

“It was a difficult decision,” said Mindy Project executive producer, Matt Warburton.

The Official Hulu Season 6 Synopsis

She’s done it! After five seasons of The Mindy Project, Mindy’s bagged herself a husband. Sure, an impulsive elopement wasn’t the fairy tale wedding of her dreams, but now it’s finally time to see what comes after “I do.” But it’s hard for Mindy (Kaling) to settle down as a married lady when there’s so much juicy drama at Shulman and Associates! As Jeremy (Weeks) and Anna (Rebecca Rittenhouse) navigate the uncertainties of a new relationship, Tamra (Roquemore) signs on to be Lahiri Fertility’s newest (and top-secret) patient.

And as The Mindy Project‘s hilarious final season draws to a close, will Morgan (Barinholtz), Jody (Garret Dillahunt) and the rest of the doctors and nurses find their happily ever after? And will Mindy decide that “having it all” is really all she ever wanted?

6 Things You Need to Know about Season 6

Mindy’s Married Life is Not What She Expected

Over the years, Mindy Lahiri has dated a ton of guys and she’s come close to getting married a couple of times — she was engaged to Casey and Danny. What Mindy wanted most, however, was to cross the finish line into wedded bliss.

Kaling: This is a character who is obsessed with marriage. The whole first scene of the show is talking about how she thinks her life is a failure because she didn’t marry Bill Hader (who played Mindy’s ex-boyfriend Tom McDougall).

In season six, she’s done it. She’s married. But if you recall, the last image of Mindy the audience sees in the season five finale is this “Oh God, what did I just do?” look on her face.

In tonight’s premiere, she and Ben (Bryan Greenberg) and Ben’s daughter Lindsay (Brianna Reed) are a family. But it might help to remember that look on her face.

Kaling: What is really fun about this season is showing [Mindy] the reality of a marriage and what lived up to the expectations and what didn’t, and then, frankly, getting disillusioned with it over the course of the season.

Warburton: She finally got married to someone, not the person she thought she was going to. And in the beginning of the season, we are going to deal with repercussions of that. This season is kind of about her being in an unexpected place. Things didn’t turn out this way or that way like she thought.

Lots of Guest Star Goodness in Season 6

As you’d expect, there are going to be a lot of guest stars popping in and out of the Mindy Project realm. Someone new to the scene is Julie Bowen, who plays a character that might trigger some of Mindy’s insecurities as to whether she’s a good parent.

Warburton: We were very lucky to get Julie Bowen to play a rival mother who thinks that Mindy’s not doing that great of a job. So we definitely, in this final group of scenes, have new stuff for her to learn about parenthood, love, and her practice and being a doctor.

Since there’s a sizable pool of exes and friends for Mindy to reconnect with before the show bids goodbye forever, expect some familiar faces to make return appearances during this 10-episode final season.

Warburton: You knew the fans were going to want to see the Duplass brothers one more time. They are going to want to see Adam Pally (Peter) again, Glenn Howerton (Cliff) and all of these people who were, lucky for us, very excited to come back.

The show’s guest star roster has been stellar. These are actors who have made their mark on The Mindy Project and beyond.

Kaling: We find people like Tommy Dewey (Josh), Mark Duplass (Brendan), you know? And then they go on. We have them for about a year, and then they are the star of their own show. And Adam Pally…and that’s been one of the most gratifying things is the level of talent that has wanted to come and do the show.

More Story for Everyone

As you can see in the season six synopsis, Tamra’s getting a storyline this year. So is Jeremy. Morgan, too. The show is spreading the wealth when it comes to spending quality time on its main cast of characters.

Kaling: I like, in the final season of a show, where you feel that all of the series regulars have an episode and storyline that is dedicated to their character. So that’s something that was really fun for us to do.

Warburton: Some characters who had never gotten the complete story will get that story this year.

Ike Barinholtz’ Real Life Injury Was Written Into the Show

When filming the movie The Pact, Ike Barinholtz broke his neck during a stunt. What Kaling and Warburton decided to do is write the injury into Morgan’s story.

Ike Barinholtz: After I hurt myself, I had a couple of weeks where it was a little touch and go, and I had a very emotional kind of phone call with Mindy right after it happened. I was, like, ‘Hey, listen, I hurt myself, and I don’t know, kind of, what I can do, what I can and can’t do.’ And she was really just instantly, like, ‘We are going to write it into the show. We are going to take care of you, whatever you need. If you can’t do stuff, you tell me. We are going to make sure you are safe and that you are not hurting and stuff.’

And it was just a really emotional phone call, and I started kind of crying. And there was a beat, and Mindy said, ‘Do you think it would be okay if Morgan broke his neck falling out of his bunk bed?’ And we both started laughing so hard because it was ridiculous that my character shares a bunk bed with Fortune Feimster. He’s a 40-year-old man sharing a bunkbed, and he fell out of the top bunk, and that’s how he broke his neck. It’s ridiculous.

Kaling: After waiting a respectful amount of time to hear what had happened to you, your friend breaks his neck on a movie, I thought that was a fun pitch for the character.After waiting a respectful amount of time to hear what had happened to you, your friend breaks his neck on a movie, I thought that was a fun pitch for the character.

Chris Messina (Danny) Will Be Back

Kaling: Chris Messina is going to be coming back for multiple episodes, which is so exciting. We’ve been texting with him recently, and we wrote some great stuff for Danny and Mindy.

Warburton: It’s going to be great to see him again on the show.

For many Mindy Project fans, the core relationship of the show is Mindy and Danny. It’s been a minute since the two doctors have interacted on screen. Their engagement ended when the two had differing views of what it meant to be a committed couple.

He spearheaded the traditional approach, a scenario where Mindy was the stay-at-home mom. Meanwhile, her fertility practice was just taking off. She knew she could be a good mom and have a fulfilling professional career. Their two perspectives clashed and they broke up.

Of course, they did briefly “reconnect” but that’s all it was. If you recall, Danny was already engaged to another woman, and on top of that, he didn’t tell Mindy about said engagement. 

Regardless, there’s still positive fan feedback out there for a Danny/Mindy reunion.

Kaling: While they love Mindy dating other characters and we’ve had so many great guest stars, and even Mindy being single is super enjoyable and very enjoyable to write, that they sort of hope that Danny and Mindy are the endgame romantically.

Barinholtz: I’m lucky enough to direct one of the episodes he’s doing. And when I was reading the back-and-forth with them, it was just like so automatic, two characters that have such a strong point of view that, for so many reasons, hate each other, but they’re bound.

Warburton: The one thing we can promise the audience is a little bit of clarity about where they stand. You know what I mean? It’s so great to see him back. We’ve always known they’re always going to be in each other’s life. They have a kid together. But it’s great to actually see what that means this season.

Kaling: And it’s complicated. We ended last season with [Mindy] married to Bryan Greenberg’s character, and his character is married to Greta Gerwig’s character. So they’re both married to other people. So we went into that season with all of that, which makes things kind of fun and delicious to write.

A Happy Ending For Mindy Will Happen

…but what will that happy ending look like?

Kaling: I think we are romantics and I think that happily ever after can sometimes be romantic happiness, and sometimes it can be a feeling of contentment about your life as a professional person and as a mother.

Barinholtz: I think, the character, Mindy Lahiri, we’ve watched her grow so much. Season 1, she would consider marrying a Chris Evans body pillow, and that would be happiness to her. Do you know what I mean? But now I think we’ve watched her grow. We’ve watched her love and lose and have a child, and her career has gotten bigger. So I think her perception of happiness has changed so much.

Kaling: I will say I think that all of us would agree that we do have happily ever after; the connotations that everything is tied up neatly with a bow is something that we aren’t super interested in.

Kaling adds that she thinks they’ll have done a good job if they leave the audience “with a sense of feeling that [the show] was about something and that it really was a project and she came to some kind of growth at the end.”

The final season of The Mindy Project begins streaming today on Hulu.