The Pitt

Max

The season finale of The Pitt doesn’t air until tomorrow, but there’s some big news about season 2, including a release date that’s much closer than anyone would have anticipated.

As it stands the release date, or at least release month, for The Pitt season 2 is January 2026. That would make it just 9 months from now and exactly a year from when the 15 episode season 1 began in January 2025.

A new report from Variety says that the show will start shooting this June ahead of that 2026 premiere, and the intention is that Max wants to make this a yearly series, a true rarity in the streaming space. How is it even possible for The Pitt to do this in an age when that barely even happens any more? And with a 15 episode season no less? A few reasons:

• Easy location shooting – The entire series takes place in, as you know, the emergency department a hospital with only a handful of outside spaces. There’s no need for mass location scouting and filming given that this is supposed to be a real-time shift within a specific department of a specific hospital.
• Cast availability – Having seen the show, you’ll know this is a big break for a huge amount of its talented actors, many of whom have not appeared in anything resembling high profile projects. So, they’re obviously going to stick with it as long as they can. By the nature of the story some may need to rotate out (bye med students?) but the majority of the casting will just be smaller patient roles.
• It’s cheap – Because of the two factors above, Max is going to throw everything they have at this to maximize its popularity. I’m sure they would love nothing more than The Pitt becoming their #1 show that airs every year without fail with a budget that’s a fraction of its high profile series like The Last of Us and House of the Dragon. So Max will make this work.

What we know about season 2 ahead of this release date is that it will take place over Fourth of July weekend, possibly the busiest day of the year for the ER between overheating, drunken antics and you guessed it, fireworks trauma. It’s going to be both the same, but a lot different than season 1. And we only have to wait nine months for it.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.