HBO Max has renewed The Pitt for season three ahead of season two of the hit medical drama premiering on Thursday.
HBO and HBO Max chairman and CEO Casey Bloys announced the renewal during the series’ season two premiere event in Los Angeles Wednesday night.
The Pitt season two takes place 10 months after season one, over the July 4 weekend, giving Noah Wyle‘s Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch and the other characters some time to deal with the issues that emerged from the mass shooting and other incidents that took place in season one.
After Robby suffers a meltdown near the end of season one, Wyle and creator R. Scott Gemmill have teased that the second season will feature him seeking treatment for his own trauma as well as a larger “journey of healing,” as Gemmill put it.
The Pitt, which has been praised for its accurate portrayals of medicine and the challenges faced by front line health care workers, will also, in season two, explore how high-profile real-life changes, including layoffs and funding losses, play out.
In addition to Wyle, the series, created by fellow ER alum R. Scott Gemmill, also stars Patrick Ball (Dr. Langdon), Katherine LaNasa (Dana Evans), Supriya Ganesh (Dr. Mohan), Fiona Dourif (Dr. McKay), Taylor Dearden (Dr. King), Isa Briones (Dr. Santos), Gerran Howell (Whitaker), Shabana Azeez (Javadi) and Sepideh Moafi (Dr. Al-Hashimi).
Despite traumatic experiences and exits from the emergency department in season one, LaNasa’s charge nurse Dana and Ball’s Dr. Langdon both return in season two.
The first season of The Pitt won five Emmys, including best drama series, best actor (Wyle) and supporting actress (LaNasa).
The series is produced by John Wells Productions with Warner Bros. TV. Gemmill, Wells and Wyle executive produce alongside JWP’s Erin Jontow, Joe Sachs, Simran Baidwan and Michael Hissrich.
The Pitt returns to HBO Max almost exactly one year after it premiered, debuting on Thursday, Jan. 8, at 9 p.m., with new episodes of the 15-episode season dropping weekly ahead of the April 16 finale.
Bloys has also indicated that The Pitt is a model of the kinds of series that they aim to produce as Max Originals.
“I can say now that Max Originals serve a very specific purpose: We are leaning into more cost-efficient, yet elevated and high quality series with a greater number of episodes that can return each year,” Bloys said at a fall press event. “These originals are designed to attract audiences that are adjacent to the typical HBO fans, while also feeding our strategy to deliver 52 weeks of new programming a year. The Pitt, of course, was our first shot, and we really did catch lightning in a bottle.”
As for how long The Pitt will last, Gemmill told The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the season one finale that he’s happy to keep going until someone tells him to stop.
“I think a very important part of my job is to keep a show on the air as long as possible,” he says. “Because this is still a business. The business has been hit pretty hard between COVID and the strikes. … I will always, I tend to, will work on a show until they take my chair away and shut the lights out, because I think that’s really important to give people the opportunity to work, and to work in Los Angeles and to work the sensible hours that we do. It’s really important. And so I don’t look to the next best, next big thing. I’m really dedicated to whatever show I’m on at the time and trying to make it last until people either don’t want to work on it anymore, or people don’t want to watch it anymore, and then we move on and do the next thing.”