On one level, we might have seen this coming. The Good Wife has been, since the beginning of this season, robustly willing to blow up its own firm and its own form, and the death of a major character at the hands of his client — something that’s been in the works for a year — is another indicator that TGW wants to keep you on your toes rather than settle into being procedural comfort food. But on another level, Will’s exit is also a reminder that the question of which of two powerful men Alicia Florrick was going to end up with has long been inimical to the intelligent, tough-minded spirit of this series and to its main character’s transformation from pawn into player. (Has a show ever outgrown its title so quickly? Other than Cougar Town?) “Should the cute girl choose the vampire or the werewolf” is many things, but it’s not grown-up, it’s not dramatic, and, after 100 episodes, it’s not nearly as compelling as the notion that the adult woman in question might choose neither, and might even be more interested in other things.

Alicia’s search for her identity — how much she’s willing to define herself apart from the men in her life, how she seems to become more like Peter (and in some ways like Will) the less she depends on them, how she chooses to be “good,” and how slippery she lets her definition of that word become — is the engine that has long powered this excellent, chance-taking series. Now we’ll get to see how she deals with the loss of a friend, a lover, and a rival, as well as with overwhelming grief and knowledge of what Will thought he knew about her husband. We’ll also see Diane cope with going it alone, and a merger of the two firms down the road into one that has a wholly altered power structure seems well within the realm of dramatic possibility. Dramatic possibility is, by the way, the quality that is supposed to keep us watching, and one that TV dramas reach for too rarely. I’m sympathetic, I guess, to those who were so invested in “Willicia” that they feel they’ll no longer have a rooting interest in the series. But I don’t think we’ve been watching the same show.