After Thursday’s season finale, fans of “The Pitt” aren’t wrong to wonder: Did Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) make any emotional progress in Season 2?
“The Pitt” showrunner R. Scott Gemmill doesn’t think he did.
“That’s part of his problem: He’s very good at giving advice, not very good at taking it,” Gemmill said in a Zoom interview Tuesday. “Season 3 is really about that journey, hopefully getting him back in a good head space.”
Thursday’s Season 2 finale saw not one but two colleagues lecture Robby.
“You need to get some help,” says Dr. Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy). “You’ve got to find somebody to help you dance through the darkness.”
If Abbot is sympathetic, Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), who’s been in Robby’s crosshairs all season after Langdon got caught stealing drugs from the ER in Season 1, is harsher in his critique.
“How can any of us live up to your standards if you can’t even do it?” Langdon says. “You need help, Robby.”
The lectures did not motivate Robby in the moment, Gemmill said, “because he’s a stubborn individual and he keeps a façade that the chief has to maintain in order to keep his role as tribal leader.
“But in the end, I think it will register with him,” Gemmill said. “He’ll realize how many people really do care about him. There is a good reason for him to not do anything stupid.”
In the second season finale, Robby also learns Dr. Al-Hashimi (Spideh Moafi) has a condition that causes seizures. That would seem to put an end to her career seeing patients and performing medical procedures, but Gemmill suggests she’ll be back in Season 3.
“It’s going to really force her to make some decisions,” he said. “Can she continue to practice medicine? She could certainly teach, but whether she could be actively working in the emergency department, that’s part of the thesis of Season 3 for Al Hashimi.”
Gemmill points to Whitaker (Gerran Howell) and Javadi (Shabana Azeez) as the characters who grew the most from the start of Season 1 to the end of Season 2.
“(Whitaker’s) really gone from somebody who is constantly calling for help and being so overwhelmed to being much more competent, and we see him even teaching now. He really represents that process of learning,” Gemmill said. “Javadi, obviously, has come into her own and got to learn to stand up for herself. … Hopefully there’s growth in all the characters, but the younger ones have more growth ahead of them, so I think it’s more pronounced when you see them evolving.”
Viewers never heard the upshot of Nurse Jesse (Ned Browder) being taken out of the ER against his will by ICE agents; Gemmill said viewers will learn what happened in Season 3, which begins filming in June and is expected to premiere in January again. Already the writers are at work plotting what comes next for the characters who will return.
It’s already been announced that Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) won’t be back in what was chalked up to a “creative choice” for the series. At an event in Los Angeles last weekend, “The Pitt” star Noah Wyle said cast changes are necessary to keep the show realistic.
“It’s an inevitability that’s going to happen every season with this show because, as writers, we’re hard-pressed to figure out what a lapse of time we can have and keep most of the ensemble together realistically,” Wyle told Variety. “Emergency rooms have a high revolving door (rate).”
Gemmill said producers don’t take the cast changes lightly.
“We spend a lot of time, really, deciding how we want to proceed with that,” he said, adding that he can’t yet say if there will be other departures. “It’s just part of the format of the show.”
In addition to creative decisions, Gemmill said cast changes can also depend on the actor, too.
“If someone has had enough, or they want to leave, or they have opportunities, we give people opportunities,” he said. “Then to see them get offered their own projects is wonderful. So that’s part of it. Part of it is what creatively feels right story-wise. Sometimes it’s done (because) life is unpredictable and you can’t always count on what’s going to happen, and people come into your lives and exit your lives, sometimes unexpectedly and when you least prefer it. We just try and keep things interesting.”
Season 3 will take place in November, four months after Season 2 . To get the seasonal look right in exterior shots, “The Pitt” will return to Pittsburgh to film for a few days in November, unlike the past two seasons when a few days of location filming occurred in September 2024 and 2025. (The bulk of the series films on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, Calif.)
“We’re trying to get a little colder weather, a little colder environment to see how that affects the kind of cases that come into the emergency department,” Gemmill said.
So far in the plotting of Season 3, Gemmill said, “some things we think we have a pretty good handle on, (others we’re) still figuring out a lot. We don’t start shooting until June, and the writers’ room really goes through most of the season because we’re constantly tweaking and adjusting.”
Gemmill said the theme of “physician, heal thyself” has come up in the writers’ room for Season 3.
“It’s a lot about our characters learning the importance of self-preservation within the job that they’re doing,” Gemmill said.
Last year at this time, Gemmill already mentioned his plan to use The Clarks’ song “Better Without You,” which ended up at the top of the first episode of Season 2. So far he doesn’t have specific songs or Pittsburgh references lined up for Season 3. But they will come.
“Today I was just looking up how far can you drive in eight hours from Pittsburgh?” Gemmill said. “I was trying to figure out if somebody was trying to come to see a loved one, how long (would it take) and I needed more time. … I don’t have a Pittsburgh song lined up yet, but including a lot of Pittsburgh is really important to us. I think it gives it authenticity, and we love the city, and we want to promote it as often as we can within the show.”
Talk of a potential spinoff has floated around for a while now. Gemmill said he has his hands full with “The Pitt” but he doesn’t rule out the possibility of a spinoff.
“It comes up a lot,” he said. “I never say never. If the powers that be sometime say, ‘Hey, let’s do something,’ they know where to find us. We’ll be here.”
Kept/canceled
MGM renewed “From” for a fifth and final season.
PBS’s “Masterpiece Mystery!” series “Maigret” will return for a second season.
CBS renewed daytime soap “Beyond the Gates” for two more seasons.
Peacock canceled Simu Liu’s “The Copenhagen Test” after a single season.
Channel surfing
A series-capping “Good Omens” movie debuts on Amazon’s Prime Video May 13. … Season 4 of HBO’s “The White Lotus” began filming this week on the French Riviera for an installment set during the Cannes Film Festival. … For the big screen, TV spinoff “Game of Thrones: Aegon’s Conquest” is likely to focus on Aegon I Targaryen (aka Aegon the Conqueror), the first Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, per Deadline.com.