‘The Pitt’ Scoop: Noah Wyle, EPs & Cast Tease Season 2 Time Jump, New Characters & More

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for The Pitt Season 1.]

The good news: Work on The Pitt Season 2 is already underway, as Noah Wyle told TV Insider when we spoke about the fantastic Season 1 finale. The even better news? We have scoop on what’s coming up.

The Pitt is Max’s new hit medical drama, each season of which takes place across one shift in real-time. It’s a format that worked so well. But also because of that, it also means there will be a time jump between seasons.

“I don’t think anybody would benefit from seeing us come back the next day. So I think there needs to be a passage of time for characters to have absorbed this experience and then have it manifest itself however it’s going to, and for there to be things that the audience won’t be privy to that we’ll make reference to that will create a sense of a little bit of mystery and a little bit of puzzle that’ll be fun to fill in,” Wyle (who also serves as an executive producer and writer and has shared that he hopes to direct in Season 2) explained to us.

Below, get scoop and hopes for Season 2 from stars Wyle (Robby), Patrick Ball (Langdon), Katherine LaNasa (Dana), Fiona Dourif (McKay), and Shawn Hatosy (Abbot), and executive producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells.

When will The Pitt Season 2 take place?

Gemmill had told us in-season that they were considering having Season 2 be Langdon’s first day back after rehab, and when talking about the finale, he confirmed that will be the case. “We’re planning on being 10 months later. It’s going to be the Fourth of July weekend. It’ll be Langdon’s first day back,” he shared.

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Will Season 2 be different?

Not really. As Wyle explained, people have been connecting with the show, and that’s something they need to keep in mind.

“I’ve been so profoundly moved by the sentiments I’ve received from the medical community who feel very much like they are walking in one-to-one step with these characters that I want all of our characters to be exactly where they should be organically that much later,” he shared. “What’s incumbent upon us is to resist the temptation, I think, to be too sensational coming back with trying to deal with things bigger or better than we’ve done them before. What’s been really gratifying is hearing the audiences have really connected to the more human moments, the smaller bits of behavior, the really personal storylines. That is encouraging because it means that we can still mine those small spaces for all the big drama that we need without having to resort to things that feel stunty or inorganic. So it’s just a question of being disciplined.”

Who will be back for The Pitt Season 2?

With the time jump and it being July, “we’ll get to see some new med students, maybe a new nursing student,” said Gemmill.

Furthermore, not everyone will be back, he added. “We played a fairly straight shift last year, but a lot of times, people come in halfway through a shift and things like that. So even if you don’t see everyone right off the top, they may show up eventually, but they may have the day off.”

We saw that be the case with doctors like Abbot, who appeared in the premiere then Episode 12, 13, 14, and 15, when he came back on his day off to help with the mass casualty incident, as well as the night shift staff, including Ellis (Ayesha Harris) and Shen (Ken Kirby).

“We have plans to try and get as many people in as possible,” promised Gemmill.

It’s also possible that while Robby remarked that they’ll all be back at the end of the finale, that could still change. “Somebody might quit,” Gemmill warned.

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How will the characters be different in Season 2?

With the time jump, some of the doctors will have been bumped up. “Whitaker [Gerran Howell] will be getting a paycheck and Santos [Isa Briones] will be an R2,” Gemmill revealed.

Speaking of those two, they’re now roommates, after Santos discovered that Whitaker’s been living in the hospital. “That’s a spinoff, and you should start your writing campaign today,” the EP joked. “I think it’s going to be really interesting because they’re very different, obviously, on so many levels, but I think we have an interesting story that happens between them that’s going to play out over next season and it kind of shows how much they’ve sort of bonded and how much they care for each other.”

The finale saw Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) running on an adrenaline high, wanting to keep working even as everyone was looking forward to finally heading home after the extended shift, until she had a moment where it all crashed down on her. McKay also talked to her about how the job can’t be her life. She is going to try to take her advice, confirmed Gemmill. But, he cautioned, “I think things aren’t going to work out exactly how our Dr. Mohan had planned. She’s very much a planner, and as we know, life doesn’t always follow your plans the way you would hope.”

One of the sweetest doctors on the show is King (Taylor Dearden), and Robby told her never to apologize for feeling something for her patients. In a way, it feels like she’s someone the ED might not change. But the EPs aren’t so sure about that. “I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Wells admitted.

Added Gemmill, “She has some things to learn next year for sure, and we’re exploring some of that right now. Everyone has something to learn. It might not be medicine, it might be personal, it might be social. There are other aspects to their lives that can also seek improvement.”

McKay will no longer have her ankle monitor (she’d mentioned she was due to have it off next week), and while she will be “a little different,” the EP teased, “it’ll have to do with other things, in terms of where she is in her life. Good thing for her, that part of her life has been resolved and she’s sort of worked things out with her ex-husband, but she has some new elements of her life to deal with.”

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Will Season 2 take place outside of the hospital at all?

The first season barely left the hospital and its ambulance bay. We did see King pick up her sister, as well as some of the staff in the park across the street, at the end of the finale. And don’t expect that to change in Season 2.

“The plan is to stay. I think the stories are best told from inside the hospital, and I think that’s how patients see the ER and that’s sort of our perspective,” said Gemmill.

Wells explained, “And the way that it’s a workplace. You go to work and we want the audience to come to work with us. That’s the whole idea, is it’s like a ride along. You’re just stepping in and following ’em all day long and seeing what they go through and experiencing what they go through. And so as soon as you take it out of that much, you begin to break that covenant with the audience about what they’re going to see.”

What does the cast hope to see in Season 2?

One of the big questions heading into Season 2 is whether Dana will be back. LaNasa was tight-lipped when we spoke with her about the finale, which did see her take a moment to look around the ED on her way out, as if saying goodbye. But it’s impossible to imagine that hospital without Dana, especially without Dana by Robby’s side.

But should she come back, LaNasa would like to see more between Dana and Abbot — “he’s my other Robby” — as well as her personal life. “I just have seen over and over again with great writers that they just bring you more than you ever knew,” she noted.

Dourif is also hoping to see her character’s social life. “I’m looking for McKay to have a little bit more work-life balance,” she shared, adding, “I think that the part of the job that she feels the best at is the connection to people, so when she really gets to connect to the patients and get to know them, and I think maybe get a calmer day with more time.”

Ball thinks it’ll be “amazing” to see Langdon’s first day back after rehab. “I don’t think this is a huge secret, but I am in recovery. I’ve been in recovery for three years and most of my friends are in recovery. And so being able to tell that story of what that journey is like would be an incredible gift. It would be really hard. It’s a rocky road those early months into recovery. So it would be really, really exciting for Langdon. I think it would be really, really special for me.”

He’s also interested in seeing his struggles as a husband. “On a normal show, we would have three different affairs by now, or we would have gone home and met Langdon’s wife and kids and we would’ve done all this stuff,” Ball told us in-season. “But Scott is so good with how sparse he is with the nuggets that he does drop for these doctors’ personal lives because it is a real commitment to the job being first. But he does give you these little nuggets of things that I’m really excited to figure out what’s going on at home.”

As Hatosy sees it, “the sky’s the limit for Season 2,” when it comes to Abbot.

“I find this character to be more like me than any character I’ve played, which can be a scary thing. Personality wise, he’s a lot like me and accepting that felt really freeing and comforting,” he said. “There’s something about playing a character who isn’t defined by a wardrobe or makeup. He’s scruffy, he’s got a go bag. He’s just real and authentic, and he’s just got this quiet confidence that comes from knowing exactly what he’s doing. He’s real, he’s raw. He’s so competent in this world. I really enjoy him. I find that people are also liking him, and I’ve never really had that before, so it’s just a lot of fun.”

What are you hoping to see in Season 2? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Pitt, Season 2, TBA, Max