The Real Reason The Pitt Takes Place During Summer Seasons

Season 2 of "The Pitt" is set to debut in January 2026 and, frankly, that's too long to wait. HBO Max's new medical drama has become a sensation, providing a strikingly realistic look at the often harrowing experience of working in a busy emergency room. That by itself might make for a bit of a miserable experience, but the excellent writing and performances are irresistibly good, to the point that fans were surely a little upset to have to bid the staff of the fictional (but very real-feeling) Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center ER goodbye.

Thankfully, January 2026 isn't too long to wait in TV terms and we've already seen several details emerge. The setting and time jump for season 2 of "The Pitt" have already been confirmed, with plans in place for the second run of episodes to take place over a Fourth of July weekend 10 months after the events of the first season. That should make things particularly interesting for Noah Wyle's Dr. Michael Robinavitch and his team of doctors as they'll have to deal with all manner of medical emergency (surely, some sort of fireworks-related mishap will form part of the new season).

That said, things shouldn't be too different when "The Pitt" finally returns. Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill and executive producers John Wells and Wyle will want to stick to the same formula that made season 1 so successful, marrying your typical HBO drama with some of the most realistic representations of emergency medicine ever filmed. But it seems the summertime setting of season 2 won't be that far removed from the first batch of episodes, as we now know that season 1 took place on a day in early September. What is it about the Summer months that's so attractive to the series' creative team? Well it turns out there's a very practical reason for it.

Though July 4 will no doubt bring a whole host of new medical catastrophes for Dr. Robby and co. to handle, it won't actually be that much different to the early-September shift we saw in season 1 — at least in terms of the setting. "The Pitt" is mostly shot on a (surprisingly expensive) set built on a sound stage at Warner Bros. studios in Burbank. But season 1 also involved several exterior shots of Pittsburgh, including some important scenes on the roof of the hospital involving Noah Wyle's Dr. Robby and Shawn Hatosy's Dr. Jack Abbott, which bookend the season.

Interestingly enough, these exterior scenes were actually filmed before shooting commenced back in Burbank. As Showrunner R. Scott Gemmill revealed to The Hollywood Reporter, the Pittsburgh shots were captured in September, as it was "the best time" for the crew to shoot in the city. "It's not too late in the season," explained Gemmill. "It's actually kind of too early in the season for some of the [writers] because whatever we write and shoot there in September, you know, like the scenes in the park, the scene on the roof with Robby and Abbot, the scene with the helicopter, the blood arriving, all those were shot in September. So you have to write the scenes that you think the show is going to end on without really knowing how you're going to get there." 

Having shot the opening scene of Dr. Robby talking down Dr. Abbott from the roof of the hospital, and the final scene where those two roles were reversed, Gemmill and his writers essentially had to create the connecting material after the fact. "That's a little tricky," he admitted, before explaining how practical needs outweigh the pressure to make the writing process easier. "We didn't want to be [in Pittsburgh] in the wintertime, so September is going to have to match for anywhere from, say, April through November." For season 2, the writers simply picked a specific weekend within this April-November time-frame. As Gemmill put it, "We'd already done September, so we just picked July as a good midway point."

If the shooting schedule for "The Pitt" makes it so that the show always has to take place between April to November, does that mean we'll never get, say, a season set at Christmas? Or New Years? For the time being, it appears that way, but given how popular season 1 turned out to be and the quickness with which HBO Max renewed it, I'd imagine the production team would be given more leeway and more importantly, money, to make the show they want to make in future.

The series is actually quite cost effective in the grand scheme of things, with one episode of "The Pitt" costing around $5 million (it's not uncommon for popular streaming series to cost upwards of $20 million and Netflix reportedly spent $30 million an episode on "Stranger Things" season 4). As such, it's hard to imagine "The Pitt" won't be given more freedom as it continues, which will hopefully result in not just the ability to be more flexible with its shooting schedule, but the arrival of the night shift spin-off that fans have been waiting for. Presumably such a spin-off could be a little more flexible in terms of the time-frame if the exterior shots are all set after dark.

Whatever happens, it's still very much early days for "The Pitt" and whatever restrictions the show is facing at this time aren't necessarily going to remain if it continues to be as popular as the first season.