I saw a lot of great shows in 2025, but The Pitt was far and away the best of them. I couldn't wait to get to my couch every week to see what was next on that show, and over the course of the season I gained a new appreciation for the power of really good serialized television. So when Season 2 was announced with a rather quick turnaround, my expectations were through the roof.
Fortunately, The Pitt's second season is every bit as compelling, inviting, and compulsively watchable as its first, and it does all of that without ever feeling like a carbon copy of what came before. These characters have grown, they've changed, they've found new ways to relate to one another, and it all feels completely natural in relation to what came before. Throw in some wonderful practical medical effects and truly excellent pacing, and it's very simple: The Best Show on TV is Back.
This time around, it's the Fourth of July in PIttsburgh, and Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) is reporting for what will be his final shift in Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center's emergency room before he leaves for a "sabbatical" that's really an excuse to ride his motorcycle across North America. It's quiet when he arrives early in the morning, but all the usual suspects are also reporting for duty. Dr. Mel King (Taylor Dearden), Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif), Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones), and faithful charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) are all here, as are medical students Javadi (Shabana Azeez) and Whitaker (Gerran Howell). There's also, crucially, a new attending in the form of Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi), who'll be running the place while Robby's gone.
As with its masterful first season, The Pitt slides you into this environment full of brilliant people with such nimble ease that you're simply pulled along by the very simple conflicts arising. Al-Hashimi has different ways of doing things than Robbie, there's the question of what'll happen to Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball) after last season, Mel's got her first-ever deposition coming up, and so on. These are straightforward character dilemmas, and in between there are, of course, the patients, from an alcoholic dealing with fluid buildup to a deaf woman in need of an interpreter to figure out her headaches and dizzy spells. The Pitt is so good at pushing its characters and its audience into problem solving mode that, for a little while at least, you don't even realize that a larger story is taking shape.
I won't spoil the larger story, but this time around the series is covering everything from the use of AI in medicine to the limits of medical authority to the simple chaos of what happens when a bunch of stuff just…stops working on a busy holiday in the ER. As with last season, a big part of the show's appeal is watching these people think on their feet, find their way through problems, juggle multiple dilemmas at once, but there's something else at work too. Now that the first season is established as a favorite show for so many, and we know these people and these faces (though there are some new ones too), the question becomes what the series can do to challenge them, to make the controlled chaos of their lives more dramatic. The answer, in the end, is to strip down their vocation to its barest, most essential elements. When the high tech toys go away and the chips are down, what kind of Doctor do you want to be? What kind of Doctor will the system allow you to be? It's all wrapped up in a deeply entertaining package, but that's the core of this season of The Pitt, and it's thrilling.
And of course, the craft of the series is still wonderfully on-point, from the design of each gruesome medical emergency to the simple flow of the show as it moves, in real time, from room to room and character to character. The writing, directing, lighting, performances, they're all wonderful, and where the cast is concerned we once again get plenty of standout moments from the entire ensemble. The real highlight of this season, though? It's Katherine LaNasa, who seems instantly poised to collect another Emmy for her work as Dana.
Right now, if they announced they were going full ER and making 20 seasons of this series, I would happily sign up. The Pitt remains absolutely jaw-dropping television, and if you loved the first season, that love won't fade one bit.
The Pitt Season 2 premieres January 8 on HBO Max.
