This is so late to say, but I can't believe people were saying that they wished Grace was dead, because it would be better than her absence on Lone Star.
Please be forreal and admit that if Grace was dead, the entire fanbase would be spiraling and coining the show as "ruining" one of the best couples of the series and unnecessarily killing one of their poc characters.
There's a lack of realism in Grace not rushing back home, but we know the reason of real-life vs crafting an acceptable cause of a tv show that doesn't remove Judd's "Heart" and go the cliché route of ending her legacy entirely through death, because their actor left the show. I know Judd was on his last leg at the time of their phone call, but there's not a world in which Judd would tell her his struggle if he thought it meant causing her to sacrifice her personal dreams. It's the same with Tommy, but she is hellbent on caring for herself and not reaching out to others for help, so it's pretty on brand for her during her cancer battle.
At least this way, Grace can live on, being present in season 4 and she doesn't join the list of characters meeting their end in sad tv deaths during their final season. Judd had to be lost, because it wasn't realistic for him any other way, while acknowledging her impact and paralleling him being at a point of wanting to end his life when he met her to feeling out of options once he didn't have her physically there for the first time in years, anymore.
We know Sierra McClain likely departed because of budget cuts and it all makes sense now that we know this season was all but definitively cancelled while they were filming, and I fully support her decision.
I've been so sick of all the people nitpicking/saying things were "bad" this season when there was a reduced 12-episode format & everyone in the cast & crew found out about the cancellation 3 weeks before the premiere via a promo. The one thing I wish...I WISH is that they had Judd call Grace right after Charlie when the asteroid warning hit (but maybe we were meant to believe he did before). In our fantasy-driven brains, we know she comes back and they live happily ever after for good and better days. That is WAY better than a demise to her existence.












