The Pitt Episode That Changes The Entire Series, According To Noah Wyle

This article contains a discussion of mass violence.

When "The Pitt" premiered on the newly rechristened streamer HBO Max in January 2025, it slowly built up its audience thanks to positive buzz and word of mouth — so by its 12th episode, it had plenty of fans on board. Throughout the 15-episode debut season — each hour of which is meant to represent 60 minutes of a busy, chaotic, and ultimately devastating shift in an overrun Pittsburgh emergency department — we watch as Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch (Noah Wyle, the "ER" veteran who also helped develop the series and works an executive producer) saves and loses patients in basically equal measure. The real gut punch, though, comes in that 12th episode, "6:00 P.M."

During that episode, Robby and his colleagues receive a barrage of victims due to a mass shooting at PittFest, a large local gathering. Frantically, Robby and his closest friend at work, charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), try to call Robby's surrogate son Jake (Taj Speights), who they know attended PittFest with his girlfriend Leah (Sloan Mannino). As more and more devastating injuries fill the ER, Robby grows more and more panicked but has to continue to do his job as the stakes get higher and higher. A week or so after that episode aired, Wyle spoke to Esquire about it, saying he felt like it changed the show into something bigger and more complex, in that you can argue that episode 12 defines the entire series.

After interviewer Brady Langmann said he felt like more people were "talking about" the show after episode 12 of "The Pitt," Wyle wholeheartedly agreed. "That feels accurate," he said. "We were so insulated in the beginning that I didn't really have any sense of who was watching. And then I was really surprised to see a lot of nonindustry periodicals writing articles about it. Then an in-box full of DMs. It's interesting how to gauge any kind of popularity these days. In the old days, they would publish it in the [Los Angeles Times] and you could read your show ranked and you knew how many households had watched. This is a bit more of a mystery. The 12th episode redefines the series from being something that is slightly presentational as a hospital show into being something that arrives at more of a thesis statement."

Things only get worse for Robby in episode 13, "7:00 P.M." Jake is uninjured, but the same can't be said of Leah, who sustained a gunshot wound to the chest. Despite Robby and Dana's best efforts, Leah simply can't be saved, and eventually, Robby is forced to stop trying. Jake, angry and grieving and in shock, blames Robby, at which point Robby brings the young man — the son of a woman Robby once dated — to the ER's makeshift morgue. (Just to make this whole thing even more devastating, the room being used as a morgue is a pediatric wing of the emergency department, and the walls are adorned with cartoon murals of animals.) Jake sees Leah's body and demands, again, to know why Robby couldn't save her; Robby has a panic attack and collapses on the floor after ushering Jake out of the room. As Noah Wyle told Brady Langmann, he and showrunner R. Scott Gemmill always intended to break Robby down entirely before the end of "The Pitt's" first season.

"It's always been a deconstruction of a hero," Wyle explained of Robby's lowest moment. "It's always been: Let's build a hero that seems incredibly capable, incredibly knowledgeable, trustworthy, dependable, responsible, and then chip away at him. And so in the moment when you expect him to come riding in on the white horse, the horse comes in without its rider. It's jarring because we're so used to him saving the day, that when he's not there to save the day, it underscores the fragility of the whole system. You recognize that it's people who are being strained to their breaking points day in and day out, unfairly in a job where we really need them to be healthy—because their health ultimately reflects on our health."

It's really, really painful to watch Robby break down at the end of "7:00 P.M." — even though it has been argued, by me, that it's the best performance of Wyle's career to date — but at the start of the following episode, "8:00 P.M.," he gets help from an unlikely source. Shy medical student Dennis Whitaker, played by Gerran Howell, finds Robby and simply tells him that his team needs him, and it's enough to get the trauma attending off of the floor and back to work. Before that, though, Robby rocks back and forth and recites the Jewish song "Dayenu" as a sort of prayer, which is how Whitaker finds him. Wyle explained that they intended to show two very different characters connecting in this moment, and that Whitaker had to be the one to find him.

"We've sort of set up that [Robby] is Jewish, he was raised in a Jewish household, and he doesn't really talk to God anymore," Wyle mused. "That's not a conversation that's present in his life. The only thing that he can think of to do is to recite a very simple and basic prayer. And that's when Whitaker finds him—somebody who's on the opposite end of the professional spectrum. Different faith, different age. Watching those two guys try and negotiate this moment that was private and is now public was a really interesting and fun thing to play."

At the end of the day, if you find yourself emotionally gut-punched by "The Pitt," that's the point. "I was aiming at everybody's chest," Wyle said of both the storyline and his performance. "If I hit it, it's gonna make you want to come up and tell me why. And so I look at the people that want to go and tell me. What they want to tell me is their way of saying, You hit me in the chest. It means that my little mission was accomplished. We opened a window where we all look at where we are collectively. Reflect, refract, reveal is my job. If that's successful, then people do feel acknowledged or represented in some way."

"The Pitt" is available to stream on HBO Max now.