‘Marshals’: Logan Marshall-Green Explains Cal’s Diagnosis & Teases Finale

Cal (Logan Marshall-Green) finally revealed his diagnosis in the penultimate episode of Marshals Season 1, but only to Belle (Arielle Kebbel). There’s a reason for that beyond the physical intimacy Cal and Belle shared earlier this season, according to Marshall-Green. And their dynamic will be an important one in next week’s Marshals Season 1 finale.

Cal had a doctor’s appointment earlier this season during which he was diagnosed with something serious, but he kept the information to himself for a while. The former Navy SEAL ended up telling Belle during a moment of calm at their office. Cal has cancer, specifically a pancoast tumor. A pancoast tumor is a rare type of cancer that develops at the top of the lung.

Marshall-Green explains why Cal told Belle about his diagnosis before anyone else.

“As you continue on in the season, Spencer [Hudnut, showrunner] has done a really good job of surrounding Cal with people from his past and new people. But the more you watch, the more you understand he’s alone, and he really doesn’t have an outlet. That’s a pretty heavy burden to bear,” Marshall-Green tells TV Insider. “They obviously have had intimacy not just physically, but I feel like he’s allowed Belle to really help him navigate his estranged daughter, Maddy. And so, yet again, they find themselves in a moment that is quite intimate. It’s about this thing he’s been holding onto.”

Belle has an agreement with her husband that they can see other people discreetly; they’re staying married for the sake of their young son, but are no long romantically involved. Cal, meanwhile, is single. After a nightcap at the office earlier this season, Cal and Belle kissed, but they later agreed it was a mistake. You could tell both of them were disappointed by the development, but they weren’t willing to admit it. They’ve only grown closer since, and that will continue in the finale.

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Marshall-Green says that pancoast tumors are “prevalent amongst soldiers” and that this was “a story [Spencer] wanted to tell.” Hudnut, who was previously the showrunner of SEAL Team, felt a duty to tell this story with Cal “to continue to really dive in as much as we can in the 42 minutes that we have of who these men and women are when they come home and how much they are torn apart by war,” according to Marshall-Green.

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“It’s a very interesting tumor. It’s high up in his left lung, and the byproduct is not respiratory. It’s aches and it’s muscular and it’s sinewy and goes right up the neck,” the actor explains. Given that, he studied how the pain manifests in the body so he could decide how he would show that in Cal’s physicality.

Season 1 Episode 11, when Cal falls through the ice of a lake on a mountainside, was one of Marshall-Green’s hardest shoots. He says he had a bit of a break from the intensity after that, but that things are cranking up again in the finale. He says that Marshals Season 2 goes into production this week, and “we’re dogging, right out of the gate, about seven, eight pages a day.”

The Marshals cast previously teased a big cliffhanger ending, but he says that Season 2 will “pick up right where we left off, literally and figuratively. No rest for the wicked.” As for the finale’s ending, Marshall-Green says he never saw the twist coming.

Marshals, Season 1 Finale, Sunday, May 24, 8/7c, CBS

TV Guide Magazine’s Cowboys: From the Wild West to the New West Special Issue is available for order online now at Cowboys.TVGM2026.com, and for purchase on newsstands nationwide.

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