There will be another farewell to a beloved original character on The Good Wife. Emmy winner Archie Panjabi, who has played resourceful investigator Kalinda since the pilot, will be leaving at the end of the season. She is not planning a break from American television though, signing a development/holding deal with 20th Century Fox TV to headline a drama pilot for the studio in the spring for fall 2015 consideration.

Like Josh Charles, who left The Good Wife last season, Panjabi is coming to the end of her current contract, which is up at the end of the season. And like Charles, Panjabi had been thinking about moving on from the show for a while. “Archie is an amazing actress who helped build Kalinda from the ground up as an enigmatic, powerful, and sexy character,” The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King said in a statement. “It’s been a pleasure to write for her, and we’ll be sad to see her go; but we still have her for the rest of Season 6, so let’s not exhaust our good-byes yet. We look forward to meeting all the wonderful new characters Archie brings to the screen. But either way, we’re keeping the boots.”

Panjabi won an Emmy in 2010 and has earned two more nominations for her role as the provocative Kalinda Sharma. The bi-sexual character repeatedly pushed the broadcast content envelope. Kalinda has developed a strong following despite the misguided storyline involving her husband, which triggered backlash among fans. After a course correction, Good Wife has been at the top of its game the last two seasons, with Panjabi, along with Emmy-winning Julianna Margulies and Christine Baranski, delivering strong performances in the episodes surrounding the shocking death of Charles’ Will Gardner earlier this year.

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“Archie is an Emmy-award winning dramatic actress, and rightly so. Her work on The Good Wife has been extraordinary, and the time has come for her to star in a project of her own,” said 20th Century Fox EVP Casting Sharon Klein.”We couldn’t be happier that it will be with us.”

British-born Panjabi, repped by Gersh and Ken Weinrib, also recently co-starred opposite Gillian Anderson in the BBC drama The Fall, whose second season is coming to Netflix. She stars in the ITV miniseries The Widower and will appear in the features San Andreas and I Origins.