There’s the great sequence in the cafeteria – flawlessly played by Robert Sean Leonard – where Wilson finally stands up to House and says NO, as he’s always needed to. House realizes that Wilson was his conscience, and if he’s acted without one all these years, it’s because he had Wilson’s on loan whenever he needed it. This is the first step in House’s ultimate revelation. As Stacy explains: “You’ve been looking to him to find what you have got to find within yourself. Something you can find.” This is the first hint House gives himself that even though he is flawed – tremendously, hilariously flawed – he really does have the capacity to change and, more importantly, to stay true to that change.
With this established, the last hallucination is obvious. It has to be an embodiment of House’s shame. House has to confront the darkest part of himself, the part that has destroyed every relationship he’s ever had and the lives of several people. To my mind, this could only be embodied by one person, and I am so, so glad that the writers didn’t mess this one up.
It’s Cameron, Jennifer Morrison, the original woman on House’s team. The writers destroyed Cameron’s character in later seasons, showing such naked contempt for what was always one of the show’s better creations that they unceremoniously kicked her out the door midway through season six. That’s actually the event that convinced me to stop watching, because it was largely House’s fault that Cameron broke up with Chase at all, and I thought that was a step too far for even Gregory House to take. But by making Cameron the embodiment of House’s shame, the writers admitted to the mistakes they made, and infused those mistakes into the characters. House has plenty of other reasons to feel shame around Cameron; the way he toyed with her emotions in the early years, the tough attitude he always had to her ideas, the aforementioned incident with Chase, etc. Of all the people on this show, Cameron was one of the only ones House ever loved – not romantically, but platonically – and time and time again, he failed to live up to that love. It had to be Cameron appearing to him at the end.