When he dies, the show presents it open-endedly, with no indication of if or when the rest of the Gallagher brood will find out about it: While their father is in the hospital, they're at the Alibi celebrating Ian and Mickey's ( Noel Fisher) wedding anniversary, unaware of his status. The flashbacks continue while Frank's health declines, hallucinating younger versions of his children as he suffers alone in the COVID-19 ward. No, Rossum sadly didn't return to the show one last time, as many fans hoped she would, appearing instead as she was in that first episode, bustling around the house and looking after her siblings in ways Frank himself never bothered to do.

As Frank floats in and out of consciousness on a hospital gurney, he mistakes the nurse tending to him for his eldest daughter, and then, suddenly, there she is. I say this because in the finale, Shameless literally took us back to the pilot. Shameless first aired on Showtime back in 2011, and its pilot remains a wonderful hour of television, a solid way of introducing us to the world of the dysfunctional Gallagher family, laying good groundwork for things that would become important to the story later, like Fiona's commitment issues, Ian's ( Cameron Monaghan) connection to their mom, and Frank's ( William H.

Shameless series finale