Season synopsis
Contains spoilers for this season and earlier seasons.
Stacy Warner returns to Princeton-Plainsboro as the hospital’s lawyer after House diagnoses her husband Mark with acute intermittent porphyria. House and Stacy begin an affair, and she considers leaving Mark, who is living with the lasting effects of his illness. House tells her he still loves her, but when she says she would leave her husband for him, he sends her back to Mark, convinced he cannot make her happy. She leaves the hospital, and House is left with the choice he made rather than the relationship he wanted.
The cases keep pressing House’s colleagues as well as their patients. Foreman is exposed to a dangerous infection while investigating a police officer’s illness; the team treats him, but he returns with minor brain damage and a changed personality. Cameron and Foreman clash after he takes credit for her research, and Wilson eventually moves out of House’s apartment. Their friendships remain entangled with House’s habit of turning every disagreement into a test of loyalty.
During the finale, House is shot in his office by a man seeking revenge. From his hospital bed he tries to keep diagnosing a man whose tongue is swelling, while sharing a room with the shooter and experiencing a temporary end to his leg pain. Strange turns in the case make House question what is real; the conversations and apparent events after the shooting prove to be hallucinations. He wakes during the trip to surgery and asks Cuddy to try ketamine treatment for his leg, carrying the shooting and its uncertain aftermath into the next season.