Clock back in! Max renews hit medical drama The Pitt for another shift

It’s official, folks: Max has renewed The Pitt for a second season. The streaming giant announced the news on Valentine’s Day, inflating the hearts of medical drama fans everywhere, only seven episodes into its first season — a season that has rapidly made the series Max's most-watched original title globally.

“We’re excited and delighted with the audience response for our first season … and can’t be more appreciative of our partners at Max and Warner Bros. [for their support],” said The Pitt star Noah Wyle and executive producers R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells in a joint statement.

The hit series follows Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Wyle) in real time through one 15-hour shift as the chief attendant in Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital’s emergency room, which is severely underfunded and understaffed. In addition to leading his medical team, he’s also quietly dealing with the emotional anniversary of his mentor’s death from COVID-19 and with PTSD from the pandemic. For all intents and purposes, The Pitt is ER amped up on energy drinks and steroids.

“It’s been a thrill to watch audiences embrace The Pitt as an update to procedural storytelling with a cast who authentically embody the heroics of doctors and nurses on shift in a 2025 emergency room. … [W]e are excited to continue down this path with another season,” added Sarah Aubrey, Max’s Head of Original Programming.

While each episode of season 1 focuses on one hour of Dr. Robby’s shift, viewers shouldn’t necessarily expect season 2 to play out in sequence and focus on his next 15-hour shift, according to Gemmill, who also created the series. In an interview with Parade, he said season 2 will feature a time jump to address some storylines adequately:

“For some story elements that you’ll see later, I would want [the time frame] to be a little bit later. We haven’t decided whether it will be three months or two months. But it wouldn’t be the next day. That would put too much on storytelling.”

Wells further added that there are some external factors contributing to the length of the time jump. Because they do not rip story ideas from headlines but rather hear directly from those who work in emergency rooms about what they’re seeing happen, it makes it impossible to predict what will be happening weeks or months down the road.

“You really don’t know,” Wells said, “and you don’t want to foreclose it by just making all these decisions that then mean you can’t take a good story that shows up.”

But just because there’s a time jump doesn’t mean we’ll lose contact with the season 1 characters we’re coming to know and love, or that the show’s premise will change entirely. The Pitt plans to continue its realistic examination of the challenges healthcare workers face in today’s America, as seen through the lens of the front-line heroes working in a modern-day hospital in one of the busiest cities in the country; it’ll just take place in a different time frame.

Are we likely to meet some new characters? Yes. Will the drama be just as (if not more) intense? Count on it. We do have multiple storylines playing out in the first season that will have lasting effects, so expect that tension to continue building in season 2 as we likely witness new tension being created.

Wyle is a five-time Emmy nominee for his breakout role as ER doctor John Carter. Rounding out the cast of The Pitt season 1 are Tracy Ifeachor as Dr. Heather Collins, Patrick Ball as Dr. Frank Langdon, Katherine LaNasa as charge nurse Dana Evans, Supriya Ganesh as Dr. Samira Mohan, Fiona Dourif as Dr. Cassie McKay, Taylor Dearden as Dr. Melissa “Mel” King, Isa Briones as Dr. Trinity Santos, Gerran Howell as med student Dennis Whittaker, and Shabana Azeez as med student Victoria Javadi. It also features Animal Kingdom star Shawn Hatosy in a recurring role as Dr. Jack Abbott, who we will hopefully be seeing more of as season 1 continues to play out.

The Pitt season 1 is currently streaming on Max, with new episodes dropping on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET. The season finale will air on April 10.