What happened to Thirteen on House?
Dr. Remy "Thirteen" Hadley arrived in season 4 as one of 40 candidates fighting for a job on House's new team — she was applicant number 13, and the nickname stuck. Olivia Wilde played her from 2007 until 2012, but her time on the show was anything but steady.
Here's why she kept disappearing, and where she ended up.
The Huntington's storyline
Thirteen's defining arc was medical, not romantic. Her mother died of Huntington's disease, and after refusing to get tested for most of season 4, Thirteen finally learned the truth in the season finale: positive. The diagnosis — a fatal, incurable neurological disease — hung over every storyline she had afterward.
Why she kept vanishing
Wilde's absences tracked directly with her movie career. Her screen time dropped in season 6 while she filmed Tron: Legacy (2010), and she disappeared almost entirely from season 7. The show turned that real-world absence into one of its darkest reveals:
- Season 7 — Thirteen is gone with no explanation. In "The Dig," House picks her up from prison: she'd served six months for euthanizing her brother, who was in the late stages of Huntington's.
- Season 8, "Transplant" — House gets her job back, then fires her on the spot. His reasoning: if she stays, he'll keep her there forever, and she deserves to spend her remaining healthy years living, not working. It 's one of the most quietly generous things House ever does.
- Series finale, "Everybody Dies" (May 21, 2012) — Wilde returned one last time to close out the character.
Off screen, the split was amicable. Wilde left to pursue films full time — Cowboys & Aliens, In Time, Rush — and later moved behind the camera, directing Booksmart (2019) and Don't Worry Darling (2022).
Did the show ever cure her?
No — but it gave her hope. In the finale, a supposedly dead House texts Thirteen to reveal he's alive, and the implication of their final scenes is that he'd be there for her when the disease got bad. Fitting for a character House openly admitted was his favorite.