When The Pitt returns on Jan. 8, 2026, with its second season, there will be a time jump to the Fourth of July. It’s another grueling 15-hour shift for the team led by Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle), with many returning faces joined by several new ones. Coming off the heels of winning five Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Drama Series and one for Wyle, The Pitt is one of the most anticipated returning shows to kick off the new year. With so many new faces among the cast, it will be anything but a smooth, drama-free shift through the 15 episodes, each representing a real-time hour. Plus, with characters like Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) returning following his tense send-off in Season 1, tensions will be high among the staff as well.

Who Is Returning in the Pitt Season 2?

Most of the main cast is returning to reprise their roles, including Wyle as attending physician Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, Ball as senior resident Dr. Frank Langdon, Katherine LaNasa as charge nurse Dana Evans, Supriya Ganesh as third-year medical resident Dr. Samira Mohan, Fiona Dourif as second-year resident and single mother Dr. Cassie McKay, Taylor Dearden as neurodivergent second-year resident Dr. Melissa “Mel” King, Isa Briones as cocky first-year resident Dr. Trinity Santos, Gerran Howell as meek fourth-year medical student Dennis Whitaker, and Shabana Azeez as the brilliant 20-year-old third-year medical student Victoria Javadi.

One main character who won’t be returning, however, is Dr. Heather Collins, played by Tracy Ifeachor. She had an interesting arc in Season 1, discovering she was pregnant and trying to hide this information through her shift while dealing with symptoms. By early evening, however, she miscarried, pulled herself together, and continued doing her job. After a heart-to-heart with Robby, where she revealed the news along with a secret abortion she had years prior when they were dating, he told her to go home, turn her phone off, and grieve the loss as she should. It’s shortly after that the hospital got word of a tragic mass shooting at a local concert. Dr. Collins couldn’t be reached, and it’s confirmed that the character won’t return.

It’s unclear how or if her absence will be explained, but the show’s executive producer, John Wells, told The Hollywood Reporter that “if you’re a fourth-year resident in a teaching hospital, your time there is done at the end of that year.” He added that characters will “roll off” from the show as it progresses and as they grow in their careers and move on. “That will be part of the evolution of the show.” Dennis, Samira, and Victoria, then, may have limited time left.

Recurring characters coming back include Shawn Hatosy as night shift attending physician Dr. Jack Abbott, though he notes that he won’t return until later in the season. There are other minor characters like Ken Kirby as Dr. John Shen and Alexandra Metz as Dr. Yolanda Garcia, who will also be back. Chances are, we’ll also see Deepti Gupta as Victoria’s mother, Dr. Eileen Shamsi, a respected senior attending doctor, and Michael Hyatt as chief medical officer, Gloria Underwood. Neither, however, is listed in the credits for the new season as of right now.

The Pitt Season 2’s New Cast

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Along with the returning cast, Season 2 of The Pitt will see several new additions, some in bigger roles, others in small episodic guest ones as patients or other important figures. Joining the main cast is Sepideh Moafi as new attending physician Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi. She worked with both Mel and Samira previously at a veteran’s hospital. Based on the trailer, she is taking over for Robby, who has decided to take a much-needed sabbatical. Moafi is best known for her roles in The L Word: Generation Q and Black Bird.

Several other actors join in named roles, and we have basic details about who they will be playing. Here’s a rundown:

Zack Morris (EastEnders, Goosebumps) as Jackson Davis, a patient suffering from uncontrollable outbursts
Brittany Allen (All My Children, Dexter: Original Sin) as Roxie Hamler, an emergency department patient
Bonita Friedericy (Chuck, Chicago Med) as Cora Wilkins, a woman visiting a patient
Taylor Handley (Bird Box, Griselda, Mayor of Kingstown) as Paul Hamler, Roxie’s husband
Jeff Kober (Sons of Anarchy, The Walking Dead, General Hospital) as Duke, a motorcycle engineer and long-time friend of one of the doctors
Meta Golding (Criminal Minds, Ransom Canyon) as Noelle Hastings, a nurse
Luke Tennie (Shrinking, Abbott Elementary) as Dr. Crus Henderson, a fourth-year night shift resident
Christopher Thornton (Magnum P.I., The Lincoln Lawyer) as Dr. Caleb Jefferson, psychiatric attending doctor
Travis Van Winkle (You, FUBAR) as Curtis Larson, an aggressive patient

Victor Rivas Rivers will guest star as Trent Norris, the CEO of the Pittsburgh Trauma Center. A character actor with more than 70 guest roles to his name, fans will recognize Rivers from shows like Better Call Saul, Modern Family, Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Life.

Also guest starring is Brad Dourif, playing Neil McKay, Cassie’s father. Interestingly, he is the actor’s father in real life, known for his prolific career that includes roles in movies like One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, The Lord of the Rings film series, Dune, and Mississippi Burning, among many others. On TV, he also appeared in Deadwood, which earned him an Emmy nomination, and in shows like Chucky as the voice of Chucky, Once Upon a Time, and Star Trek: Voyager.

It’s worth noting that Dourif isn’t the only famous family member casting on The Pitt, one of the best TV shows of 2025. As fans may know, Dearden is the daughter of prolific actor Bryan Cranston, while Briones, who also starred in Star Trek: Picard, is the daughter of famous actor Jon Jon Briones, known for roles in the West End revival of Miss Saigon, later reprising the role of the Engineer on Broadway as well.

Notable Names in Single Episodes

Skinny Pete in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie handing his beanie to someone.Image via Netflix

Alongside these main, guest, and recurring characters, there are a few other notable names tackling roles like medical students and patients. All these actors are noted to appear in only a single episode.

Charles Baker (Breaking Bad, The Blacklist) as Troy, an unhoused patient
Irene Choi (Pam & Tommy, Truth Be Told) as Joy, a third-year medical student
Laëtitia Hollard (Ravel) as Emma, a recent nursing school graduate
Lucas Iverson (The Gilded Age) as James, a fourth-year medical student
Lawrence Robinson (Angel, Christmas with My Ex) as Brian Hancock, a charming patient with a soccer injury

What We Know So Far About Season 2 of The Pitt

Frank and nurse bumping fists in The Pitt.Image via HBO Max

Season 2 of The Pitt picks up after a time jump, about 10 months after the end of Season 1, specifically during the busy Fourth of July long weekend. This time jump allows for better believability, given how things were left off in Season 1 for some of the characters. The story taking place further into the future leaves room to explain dangling plot points. Dr. Frank Langdon, for example, was sent away to a mandatory treatment program if he wanted to keep his job, while Dana was contemplating retiring, having had enough of the stress of the job. Both did indeed follow through, but this time jump puts them right back into the fold.

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This timeline also means that all the residents have graduated to a new level, with characters like Whitaker finally becoming a paid intern and Javadi prepping for a sub-internship. Robby has plans to take time off, and Frank is coming back just as the season picks up, providing a good viewpoint for fans to catch up on everything that was missed in the last 10 months through Frank’s eyes as he’s doing the same. Wyle told Vanity Fair back in August that the plan was for Robby to take off on his three-month motorcycle riding sabbatical before Frank returned. But as the story goes, scheduling wires got crossed, and the attending resident and his former right-hand man find themselves awkwardly face-to-face again for the first time in a long time.

We can expect plenty more patients making their way through the emergency department, and waiting impatiently in triage, along with interpersonal conflicts, trauma, successes, losses, irritated and devastated patients and family members, and awkward reunions. With Robby seeing the light at the end of the tunnel this time, with a three-month sabbatical in clear view at the end of this shift, it will be interesting to see his approach. Will he be counting down the hours until he can rest and relax both his body and his mind to come back refreshed and reinvigorated? There’s little doubt.

But if Season 1 is any indication, he’ll barely have a chance to count to “three” before something comes up that takes his attention away from any thought of time off. Remember that one episode in Season 1 when he spent the entire hour just trying to get to the bathroom to urinate? The sabbatical might be a short 15 hours away, but those 15 hours will probably feel like a lifetime. The Pitt Season 2 will premiere its first episode on Jan. 8, 2026, with new episodes to follow every Thursday at 9 p.m. through April 16 for a total of 15.