The Pitt Season 2's Disappointing Character Exit Wasn't Originally Planned

Fans of "The Pitt" were understandably bummed when they learned that Supriya Ganesh's resident Dr. Samira Mohan won't return for the show's forthcoming third season. As it turns out, though, showrunner R. Scott Gemmill came up with the idea for Mohan to leave this fictional Pittsburgh emergency department partway through production on Season 2.

In a post-mortem of the Season 2 finale, "9:00 P.M.," on Vulture, Gemmill admitted that he didn't initially intend for Ganesh and Mohan to take their proverbial final bow in the massively popular show's second season ... but it was an idea that occurred to him during the writing process. Why? Well, as Gemmill told Kathryn VanArendonk, he thinks the show should feature a rotating cast and that audiences should never necessarily feel that their favorite is "safe" — or, as Gemmill put it, "It eliminates the false jeopardy some shows have." 

So why Mohan? "This is somebody who doesn't have a job lined up and might not know where she's going next, and we're trying to build up the uncertainty that these young physicians face," Gemmill explained. Still, a concern many viewers expressed in the wake of the news that Ganesh and Mohan were checking out of "The Pitt" is that, after Tracy Ifeachor's Dr. Heather Collins left between Seasons 1 and 2, the show is writing off multiple women of color. This, according to Gemmill, is "just a by-product of having a diverse cast." 

He went on to say, "We have a lot of women, and a lot of women of color. It's just coincidence more than anything else." While VanArendonk smartly points out that the only "safe" character, then, is Noah Wyle's protagonist Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, I do understand why Mohan is leaving "The Pitt." 

Introduced during the series premiere of "The Pitt" as a resident whose attention to patient care tends to make her a little bit slower at her job than some of her colleagues, Supriya Ganesh's Dr. Samira Mohan is a deeply empathetic and caring physician. Unfortunately, that style doesn't work for Robby, who pretty much immediately chastises her for spending so long with individual patients. To be fair to Robby, this is a busy emergency department, and he has a point. To be fair to Mohan, her empathy makes her a stronger and better doctor.

By the end of Season 1 of "The Pitt," we see Mohan running on pure adrenaline and elated over a successful day, but in Season 2, she's clearly experiencing some significant burnout. Throughout her lengthy shift, she keeps dodging mysterious but stress-inducing phone calls from her mom, and her stress levels get so out of control that she thinks she's having a heart attack until she realizes it's a panic attack. Yes, Robby's suggestion that she try geriatrics as a specialty — which he offers after she successfully treats two older patients who are involved in a car accident, one of whom you might recognize from a long-running procedural series — feels really rude. Still, I want to flag that Mohan never seems fully at home in the ED or comfortable with its breakneck pace, and her flustered state in Season 2 leads to a patient's death when a medical student under her charge fails to perform a necessary test.

I loved Dr. Samira Mohan on "The Pitt," and I truly am sad to see her leave the series. But does her exit mean the show is already facing narrative struggles?

To Kathryn VanArendonk's point about Robby being the only character that's not "expendable" on "The Pitt," I will definitely admit that, while I enjoyed Season 2 of the medical drama, it did sacrifice screen time for other characters to prioritize Robby, his point of view, and his personal crisis. At the end of the day, this sort of thing is to be expected. Robby is the protagonist of the series; each season begins and ends from his perspective. That doesn't change the fact, though, that other characters got sidelined this season.

At first, I felt this way about Isa Briones' resident Dr. Trinity Santos, but after learning that Briones had an emergency appendectomy around the time that they filmed Season 2, I'm admittedly willing to chalk Santos's sudden need to finish a bunch of paperwork up to the fact that the actress needed to sit down a lot. The same can't be said of Fiona Dourif's Dr. Cassie McKay, though, who does get a touching storyline with a patient who's dying by choice and then sort of fades into the background as Season 2 wraps up. 

Again, it's a bummer that we won't see Dr. Samira Mohan in Season 3 of "The Pitt," and I personally can't wait to see what Supriya Ganesh does next as an actor. (The day before the Season 2 finale aired, Ganesh wrote a phenomenal personal essay in Vulture about exploring their gender identity; it's well worth a read.) With that said, I also hope that "The Pitt" sticks to its realistic approach without sacrificing too many supporting players for Robby's storyline. "The Pitt" is streaming on HBO Max now.