Jennifer Morrison was tremendous in her scene, gently explaining to House the truth he’d always wanted to deny: That he led a dark life, and he had no one to blame but himself. That when he or his friends suffered, it was typically because of a mistake he himself had made, not because of an external force. That because of this, House had plenty of excuses to die: “They’re all different,” she says. “But the reasons are all the same. You’re arrogant. You’re self-destructive. You only care about yourself.” She is a projection of House at his worst, the part of House’s personality that should not exist and deserves to die. And unsurprisingly, she’s the only figure House can’t argue with. House’s greatest nemesis has always been, and will always be, himself.
But before departing, House has one final tidbit to share: that by saving the drug addict, he forfeited a chance to get out of the entire parole situation clean. He performed a truly selfless act. Cameron – House’s subconscious, rather – picks up on this. It undermines the conclusion he’d just come to. In any mystery, there can be a million pieces of evidence that point to one conclusion, but if there’s one contradictory idea, the answer can never be certain. House can’t just lie down and die ignoring this. Combining it with what Stacy told him, the clues point to a brighter future, a future where House could focus on the good and purge the bad. A future where he could overcome his own worst enemy by slowly robbing it of the personality traits that fuel self-destruction.
For a moment, I thought the episode would climax here, on this revelation, and I prepared for disappointment. House has seen his inner demons before. He’s recognized he has the capacity for change. The problem – his core problem, I would argue – is that none of it ever stuck. House would have to do something much more….explosive to truly enact lasting change.
And explosive is exactly the option he takes. Just as John Watson witnessed his best friend Sherlock go over the Reichenbach falls, Wilson arrives on the scene only to see House engulfed in flame. It’s in this moment, I assume, that House gets his last, most brilliant idea: the solution that will actually, permanently fix his life.
With his best friend watching, he kills Gregory House.
Yes, the man himself escapes out the back, swaps some dental records, and lives to motorcycle another day, but he lets Gregory House, the man we’ve known, loved, and loathed for eight years, perish in that monstrous fire. He has to. Gregory House is his Moriarty, the reason for all his suffering, and if he continues living in a situation where Gregory House is enabled to do his worst, he will never get healthy. So he lets Gregory House die. He severs all ties with the world he used to know, and decides to focus all his energy on a selfless action: giving Wilson the last five months he deserves.