It’s thrillingly intense. It’s obsessed with intubating. It’s occasionally infested with maggots or rats. And it has single-handedly made medical dramas cool again. With each episode covering an hour inside the hectic emergency room at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center (PTMC), awards-gobbling HBO Max hit The Pitt has become the most talked-about show on TV.
And where there’s a hit series, you’ll find an obsessive fandom. Fully invested devotees of The Pitt are busy spotting details, making predictions and hatching theories. As season two approaches midway, here are 10 for your thorough medical examination. Let’s go save some lives …
Whittaker and Robby are in love
It might be wishful thinking but entire swathes of the internet are devoted to spotting sexy vibe between Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) and Dr Dennis “Huckleberry” Whitaker (Gerran Howell). The dream duo even have their own hashtag, #Hucklerobby.
The logic goes that the mentor-and-mentee colleagues are a classic pairing of “troubled moral saviour” and “damsel in distress”. Bonded by trauma, they’re often locking eyes over a blood-spattered gurney. “I get sent a lot of fan art of Gerran and me,” says Wyle. “Sometimes we’re cowboys. Sometimes we’re camping together or taking a nap in a hammock.” “I get shown it,” adds Howell. “Sometimes against my will.”
AI will cause a patient’s death
Always tapping away at her tablet, new arrival Dr Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) has been openly promoting the use of AI-driven medical tools. However, she has admitted that generative AI is only 98% accurate, which is cause for concern in a life-or-death environment.
Could this be foreshadowing a loss of life due to a patient being misdiagnosed or the algorithm prescribing the wrong meds? It would be a cautionary tale about the dangers of the divisive technology. Creatives aren’t exactly fond of AI, so you can see this playing well in the writers’ room.
Dr Abbot doesn’t exist
Robby’s overnight counterpart is his old buddy Dr Jack Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) – an amputee and ex-military medic. The pair have a habit of talking each other down from the edge of the hospital roof after tough shifts. But is he just a hallucination?
Some fans have surmised that Abbot could be a Fight Club-style alter ego and a figment of the unravelling Robby’s imagination. However, Abbot having entire conversations with other characters surely makes this nonsensical. Paging Dr Tyler Durden…
Dr Robby will adopt the abandoned baby
Will our whiskery hero find salvation by adopting “Baby Jane Doe”? Throughout season two, an unidentified infant left in the hospital loos has been undergoing paediatric tests. This initially sparked speculation that a member of hospital staff was the mother. Charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) told Robby that somebody needs to foster her, leading to further broody conjecture.
No spoilers but season two apparently ends with Dr Robby delivering a tearful monologue while holding the baby in his arms. Annoyingly, Wyle himself has debunked theories that his character will be filling out adoption papers: “I think Robby hits the road and thinks to himself, ‘Boy, it would have been nice to be in a better place where I could actually have taken that kid. Maybe one day.’”
Dr Santos will die
Rather than something dramatic happening to Dr Robby, could tragedy strike one of his underlings? Some have suggested that cocky, sarky Dr Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) might actually be the character in crisis. In season two so far, she’s exhausted, overworked, struggling to keep up with her charts and terrified of repeating her second year of residency if she falls short.
Meanwhile, her nemesis Dr Langdon is back after she reported him for stealing benzos and most colleagues seem to be siding with him. Santos’ “situationship” with surgeon Dr Yolanda Garcia (Alexandra Metz) also looks rocky. Could her struggles result in a serious error? It would be a dagger in our hearts (and a scalpel in our feet).
Myrna is the real star of the show
Hey fruitcake! Darkly comic relief comes from eccentric patient Myrna White (Jeanette O’Connor), who is handcuffed to a wheelchair. She makes saucy comments to staff, flips the bird and claims to have committed violent crimes, such as putting her husband through a meat grinder.
Some fans have joked that the entire emergency department could be a simulation and Myrna is the unwitting star of her own Truman Show-style reality series. Probably a reach.
Al-Hashimi will get sued
Another recurring thread is fan favourite Dr Melissa King (Taylor Dearden) stressing about the legal deposition she’s about to give. Colleagues have assured Mel that being sued is part of practising medicine.
This makes Al-Hashimi’s boast that she has never been sued during her 20-year career look a little odd – and perhaps like foreshadowing. Is she about to make a catastrophic error? Will it be linked to her reliance on AI? Or that mysterious moment when she froze upon receiving Baby Jane Doe’s test results?
Dr Robby is already dead
Some theorists have pointed out Robby’s vague resemblance to Jack from Lost – another handsome hospital doctor who became de facto leader of an ensemble cast – and approached The Pitt as a similar puzzle-box show. Could Robby be dead? Is the emergency department his dying dream? Or is it, like the Lost island, a purgatory-style holding pen where some people pass on and others return to life?
Dr Robby has admitted that the hospital is the only place where he can function and come truly alive. His ward-roaming brief means it often feels as if he’s floating around, looking down on the action. Even the show’s title could hint at it being a sort of hell. There’s also precedent. In the 1980s, equally acclaimed US medical drama St Elsewhere had a notorious finale where it revealed that the previous six seasons had all been the dream of an autistic boy staring at a snowglobe. No, really.
Dr Langdon is a vampire
Sounds bananas but bear with us. Senior resident Dr Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) might have returned after his rehab stint but he’s been banished to triage. Is Dr Robby refusing to fully invite Langdon into the emergency department because he’s secretly an undead ghoul?
Think about it. When he was confronted for drug theft, Langdon deadpanned: “Yeah, I’ve been stealing blood too.” He wears black scrubs and rarely sees daylight. He has the chiselled cheekbones and slicked-back hair of a Twilight sucker. Could Emmy-winning The Pitt follow Oscar-winning Sinners by suddenly genre-switching into horror, with “Fang” Langdon as neck-nibbler-in-chief? Stranger things have happened. Although admittedly not many.
Dr Robby will get sectioned (or, sob, die)
Doom-mongers fear it won’t end well for Dr Robby, whose mental health struggles only seem to be worsening. Some have predicted he’ll be involuntarily committed to a psych ward, perhaps by his replacement Al-Hashimi or his frenemy Langdon, and potentially lose his medical licence. Sadly, this would be an all too accurate reflection of the huge pressures on healthcare workers.
Others have gone one louder and predicted that he’ll be killed off. The beardy biker was seen riding his hog to work without wearing a helmet and later lied to a patient’s face about it. Several motorcycle crash victims have arrived in the department. An omen that Dr Robby will be involved in an accident himself and return to PTMC as a patient?
There have also been hints at suicidal thoughts, with the troubled medic dropping hints about “not coming back” and “not being here any more”. His preparation for going on sabbatical could also be read as someone getting their affairs in order. The prospect of Dr Robby’s demise is devastating but fret not. A smash hit show wouldn’t really sacrifice its leading man … would it?