Noah Wyle is teasing the next season of his hit HBO series The Pitt just as its second chapter comes to a close.
The star, who serves as a writer, executive producer, and the lead star of the show, said the third season will be “explosive.”
“It will be pre-Thanksgiving, moving into colder weather,” Wyle told USA Today at the PaleyFest L.A. event for The Pitt. “The holidays are approaching. The weather’s changing. People are turning on their heaters for the first time.”
Production for the third season has already commenced, with the writers, including Wyle, working on the next phase for the hospital.
“I’m too nervous about being unemployed again, so I tend to press my luck,” Wyle said. “We’re crafting storylines in the writers’ room, we’ll be back shooting in June, and hopefully get back on the air in January.”
Unlike the current July 4th-set season, winter will play a role in the next rendition of the medical drama, creator R. Scott Gemmill also confirmed. He said the fourth season will not feature as “big a jump” in time, adding, “And we’ll play with the colder weather.”
The first season of The Pitt, which swept the awards season with big wins, took place in the course of a day. Each hour-long episode was tense and action-packed as doctors and residents coped with the realities of working a single shift in a hospital.
“We made Season 1 in a vacuum. It was only after those first episodes started airing early on that we got an indication that this might be really popular,” Wyle explained. “During Season 2, we’ve been honored at award shows and been having our pictures taken. It’s been very gratifying.”
Gemill told the PaleyFest audience that the show will continue focusing on the cast “on their respective journeys as they go about their lives. Each year, we get to know a little bit more about them.”
Wyle broke down the thematic arc of the series so far, saying, “The thesis of Season 1 is that the doctor is the patient. Season 2 is doctors don’t make very good patients. Season 3, the thesis is that doctors benefit from being patients.”
For his starring role, Wyle won a Golden Globe Award, an Actor Award, a Critic’s Choice Award, and an Emmy.
At the PaleyFest event, Wyle also shed light on the season’s surprise departure, lead character Dr. Samira Mohan, played by Supriya Ganesh.
“It’s an inevitability that’s going to happen every season with this show,” Wyle told Variety. “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.”
