Just eight days into 2026 and we already have one of the most hyped TV premieres of the year: the return of smash HBO Max hit “The Pitt” (streaming on Crave). Dying to find out what happens in Season 2? We got the gossip straight from the cast themselves!
• Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) seems to be skating closer to a mental-health crisis than ever this season. He cruises up to the ER (sans helmet?!) and struggles to make it through the day before jetting off on a sabbatical. “We’re meeting him at a very interesting stage in his life, where everything that has led up until this has actually become problematic to where he is now, and we’re at a serious crossroads with him,” Wyle says. “Robby has yet to do any of that kind of (mental-health) work. The thesis of my performance for Season 2 is the denial of the need for some of that pressure to get let off.”
• Dr. Santos (Isa Briones) has to deal with the fallout of both her childhood trauma and working alongside Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), whom she reported for drug use last season. Langdon, Ball says, has been “knocked off of his toes” this season, “and that can be really scary to be like, ‘I understood who this guy was, I understood his tempo rhythm, I understood how he moved through the world,’ and it feels like really taking a risk to be like, ‘OK, I’m gonna let that go. I’m gonna let that charm go that I was leaning on last year and just hope that this other thing works out.’”
• Charge nurse Dana, Katherine LaNasa says, “is very different since the punch (in Season 1) and I think it’s been a bit of a free fall, just falling into all the new places.” (LaNasa was all smiles off-camera, however. She celebrated her Emmy by biking to a fancy-dress shop with co-star Fiona Dourif and buying herself a nice coat and ring; she also runs a Friday-night poker game for the cast every week to keep the mood light.)
• Dr. King (Taylor Dearden) has to contend with both a looming legal issue and the trials of being a neurodivergent person working in an oft-overstimulating ER (this does, however, lead to an extremely sweet scene with a colleague that is a lovely callback to Season 1). “I have never really seen (neurodivergence) done right; what I’ve noticed, especially on the spectrum I share, the (autism-ADHD) spectrum, is it feels like they represent (us) as like some kind of unfeeling robots, as opposed to the truth, which is being so overwhelmed you can’t really control how you sound, and I’ve just never seen it (onscreen) before. I get in trouble all the time because I can’t control the tone of voice, and so I will be talking to like someone and they’ll be like, ‘Why are you angry?’ I’m like, ‘I had no idea I sounded angry, wow, I’m sorry,’” Dearden says.
• Shabana Azeez (whose med-student character Javadi has a secret identity outed this season) was stoked to … suck? “I was really excited to explore the ways that Javadi fails on this shift, the ways that other people see, but also the ways that only she notices that she’s sort of really, really f—ked up, and how you get back up,” she says. “I don’t want to play like a fantasy version of a character ever. I really want to play somebody who’s like real and fails, and I hope that med students see themselves in her and the icky bits of themselves; I hope that they feel like whatever they’re doing and however they’re trying is enough and they’re doing OK.”
• Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) grapples with life and death itself this season, she says: “There’s a look at what it’s going to be like to die for McKay and what she wants her life to look like when she dies — that, I thought, was a theme that was interesting and sad and kind of had an effect on me in my actual life.”
• Some denizens of “The Pitt” don’t make it out of the season alive; one beloved character gets a heart-destroying send-off, showcasing some of Wyle’s most poignant work, along with the miserable reality of working in a busy ER.
• As many health workers like to say, the nurses are the heartbeat of the ER; this season, we can look forward to an entire episode told from their POV (directed by Wyle!).
• This season also brings a new series regular, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi, played by Sepideh Moafi. “She brings a certain gravitas that is necessary for an attending physician that is a quality that is inherent in Sepi,” Shawn Hatosy reveals. Moafi is used to playing more effusive characters that wear their hearts on their sleeve, but this character promises to be the perfect foil for the stubborn Dr. Robby. “Dr. Al-Hashimi maintains composure when in reality there is this volcanic fire inside,” she says.
• As Dr. Al-Hashemi ascends into the attending position, other staffers also find themselves stepping up. Whitaker (Gerran Howell), for example, is now a full-fledged doctor and has taken some brassy new med students under his wing.
• We may see some familiar County General faces in the Pitt at some point. In Season 1, Wyle said, they made a conscious choice to avoid casting any “ER” vets. “We didn’t want to have it seem gimmicky or like we were planting Easter eggs or winking at the camera and saying, ‘Look what we’ve done here,’” Wyle says. “We really wanted this to be an immersive experience that didn’t distract you in any way from the story we were telling, and that carried on with casting mostly unknowns. We give a lot of first opportunities to actors on this show and people that have had some work, but they haven’t quite broken through.”
Now for some fun news for “ER” fans: “We’ve moved away from that a little bit in Season 2; there have been a couple of actors that were on ‘ER’ cast,” Wyle confirms. Could that mean a potential return for series superstars like George Clooney? “I’ll believe it when I see it,” Wyle laughs. “There’s so many things I could say that are really funny jokes that he would be offended by, but why would I wanna do that?”
