In The Pitt Season 1, Robby is “a drowning man that doesn’t know he’s drowning yet,” says star and executive producer (and writer and director) Noah Wyle. “At the end of it, he recognizes the need for a life preserver. He’s still got a long way to swim to shore though.”

The critically acclaimed HBO Max medical drama received 13 Emmy nominations, including Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Wyle, and is deep in production on Season 2, set to premiere in January 2026. The series is told in real-time, with each season one shift (and each episode one hour), and it will pick up 10 months later (on Fourth of July weekend). When we last saw Robby, he’d had a breakdown after failing to save his stepson’s girlfriend and Abbot (Shawn Hatosy) found him on the roof — closer to the edge than the vet had been in the premiere, which Wyle told us was on purpose.

Now, “this is a guy that can no longer look at himself in the mirror and admit that he doesn’t have a problem, but doctors don’t always make the best patients and how he goes about trying to get himself healthy, it’s a big part of what we’re trying to grapple with this season,” Wyle tells TV Insider. But it was important that he go through what he did in Season 1 — including the patient losses, facing what led to his mentor’s death during COVID, and the breakdown — to be “who he will on the other side.”

As for who that is, “I don’t think he’s fully realized” it just yet in Season 2, adds Wyle. “It’s a process that, in success, hopefully will run several years and we can peel this onion very slowly, which would be very gratifying to watch, I think. But part of that is being realistic with where he would be 10 months later. He’d probably tried a therapist or two. He probably shot them down, intellectually sparred with them, tried to find fault with their methodology, has come up with his own plan that he thinks will work just fine to keep everybody at bay, demonstrated from the leadership standpoint that he’s going through the motions of using the resources available so that he can model that for the people under him and make sure that they do. But all of it is, what is he really letting in? What is really taking root?”

Fans will want to pay attention to the Season 2 premiere. “There’s some really lovely things that we’re going to be playing with that will be evident almost immediately in the way that we roll [it] out,” reveals Wyle.

He can’t share if there’s anything joyful coming up for his character, but he does tease, “I think I’ve already smiled more in the first four episodes that we’ve shot than I smiled in the first 14 episodes that we shot last year. Whether that smile is a mask or genuine will be up for interpretation, but I’m employing one.”

The breakdown in Season 1 Episode 13 was something he prepared for throughout filming leading up to it, and there isn’t a moment like that he’s already thinking about in Season 2 “to that degree, but he’s grappling with another big life decision. And there are going to be peaks and valleys in the season that really exemplify that,” Wyle says. “But this season also affords other characters an opportunity to move a little bit into that lane of primacy, which I think is healthy for the show’s longevity and for the balance of the narrative. Last year was a wonderful Trojan horse to introduce this whole ensemble to the world and this arena, but it is much larger and much richer than just Robby’s character. And we’re going to play a little bit with that this year, too.”

To that end, there are new characters coming in, including a new attending (Sepideh Moafi). “She’s a formidable character and energy in our emergency department,” according to the star and executive producer. “We have some new medical students. And then of course, Dana’s [Katherine LaNasa] always a good confidant for Robby. And he may have a new favorite. He may have a new acolyte.”

After the Season 1 finale, executive producer R. Scott Gemmill told us that they were having conversations about Robby’s past relationships and what that means moving forward. Wyle confirms that’s a slightly bigger part of Season 2.

“Obviously you can only play with what you can play with in the workplace, but we’re doing a little bit more to sort of talk about — because that’s all part of what makes him, his pathology — his inability to make connections, whether it’s romantic or fraternal or familial,” he says. “He has some walls up, and dismantling those walls is what’s the fun part of doing this. The writing on this show is trying to identify them and then assault them.”

We can’t blame him for those walls. After all, the resident who was close to being a work friend — “Your words, you’re never going to get me on record saying I’m friends with Langdon,” Wyle interjects — turned out to be an addict who was stealing pills from patients. And when confronted, Patrick Ball‘s character hit Robby where it hurt in the finale. Season 2’s shift is Langdon’s first back at work after rehab.

“He was hoping that their shifts wouldn’t overlap, and then they do,” Wyle admits of his character. “Robby can be petty, and forgiveness is sometimes harder for some than others. And yeah, betrayal is a big deal. Like anybody that has walls up, if they let their wall down for you and you are one of the few that get to share an intimacy, and then that turns into any kind of betrayal, the wall goes up twice as high as it was before, and that’s what we’re going to play with probably.”

In general, when it comes to Season 2, the challenge was looking at what worked so well (so much) in Season 1 and finding the balance of continuing that and introducing new elements.

“[Executive producer] John Wells said, ‘We don’t have to come back bigger, better, faster, funnier, more explosive, more dynamic. We just have to do it again,’” Wyle shares. “I was so gratified to feel when we came back to shoot Episode 1 that right off the bat, it was like we were shooting Episode 16. It was like we’d not left. Everybody — foreground, background — knew exactly what to do, except they were coming back excited and invested in a way that — last year when we were finishing, the show was debuting. Now, everybody knows which show we’re on and are super excited to be here. And that showed to me in the enthusiasm and commitment right off the bat. And so I was thrilled to look at the first couple cuts and see, we’re just telling Episode 16 and 17 and 18. We’re just adding to the chain. These all feel of a family.”

What are you hoping to see in The Pitt Season 2? Let us know in the comments section below.

The Pitt, Season 2, January 2026, HBO Max