HBO Max just dropped the first teaser for season 2 of “The Pitt,” its universally acclaimed and Emmy-nominated medical drama … and not only are some unexpected familiar faces returning, but there are also some new doctors in the mix at the titular (and hectic) Pittsburgh hospital.

To be fair, both Patrick Ball and Katherine LaNasa, whose respective characters, Dr. Frank Langdon and Dana Evans, had every reason to leave the hospital at the end of season 1, previously confirmed that they’d be back for a second season, but it’s still great to see them fully back in action. We barely see Langdon in the teaser, but we do see his grand return to the hospital after a mandated rehabilitation program. (You might recall that he was ordered to attend the program by his mentor Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, played by Noah Wyle, after the senior attending caught Langdon stealing medication from the hospital.) As for charge nurse Dana, I wouldn’t have blamed the woman if, after getting physically assaulted by a patient and working half a shift with a broken nose, she’d retired … but she welcomes Robby, who seems to have taken a sabbatical of his own, back to the emergency department with open arms here.

Other season 1 favorites like Dr. Samira Mohan (Supriya Ganesh), medical students Victoria Javadi and Dennis Whitaker (Shabana Azeez and Gerran Howell), and residents Dr. Cassie McKay, Dr. Mel King, and Dr. Trinity Santos (Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, and Isa Briones) will be back as well. Dr. Jack Abbot, the fan-favorite night shift attending played by Shawn Hatosy, will also return, although he’s not in the teaser, while Tracy Ifeachor’s Dr. Heather Collins will not be coming back to work. All the returning characters, however, will be joined by a new main character in the form of Dr. Al-Hashimi, played by Sepideh Moafi. In an Entertainment Weekly article that debuted alongside the teaser, showrunner R. Scott Gemmill teased Dr. Al-Hashimi’s character, as well as Langdon’s return.

As showrunner R. Scott Gemmill — who previously worked with series director John Wells and star and executive producer Noah Wyle on the beloved medical drama “ER” (though it’s important to note that “The Pitt” is not a spin-off of the NBC show created by Michael Crichton) — told Entertainment Weekly, season 2 of “The Pitt” is shaping up to be just as dramatic and chaotic as the first outing. After noting that word has spread throughout the titular fictional Pittsburgh hospital that Langdon was ordered to go to rehab after stealing librium, a medication that helps with alcohol withdrawal (“Gossip seems to travel faster than the internet,” he joked), Gemmill confirmed that Langdon’s return will definitely cause a stir.

He added that, within the show’s timeline, Langdon returns one day after completing his program. While this makes sense since we’ve known for a while now that season 2 of “The Pitt” takes place 10 months after the season 1 finale (specifically, on July 4), Gemmill said that this choice creates the most on-screen drama. “It was really driven by wanting to have the Langdon character back and knowing how much time he would’ve had to spend in rehab and going through his recovery process,” Gemmill told EW. “We knew it had to be about 10 months, [which] took us into the summer. We played Labor Day, essentially, for the first season, so we decide to play this on the 4th of July.”

So, what about the relationship between Robby and Langdon, which was a mentor-mentee dynamic before Langdon’s betrayal? “Let’s just say there’s a lot of history that has to be resolved between them before they can get back to any kind of normalcy,” Gemmill teased.

As for the hospital’s newest attending, Sepideh Moafi’s Dr. Al-Hashimi, Gemmill says she previously worked at the VA Hospital with Dr. Mel King and Dr. Samira Mohan, but she’s going to be a disruptive force for Robby nonetheless. “She’s gonna be someone who’s very progressive in her approach to medicine and believes in the modernization of the medical field,” Gemmill revealed. “And Robby’s a little bit more old school and there’ll be a little bit of, let’s just say, tension as they try and figure out how to work together.”

In March 2025, two months after “The Pitt” premiered and shortly before it wrapped up its inaugural season, HBO Max’s content chief Casey Bloys revealed some very good news to Vulture and said that he wants the medical drama to stick to a regular, annual schedule as much as humanly possible. After explaining why the show includes 15 episodes per season (instead of 10 or fewer, which is more in line with HBO’s other series), Bloys added, “The other really important thing about this model, and is somewhat of a lost art […] is the second season will premiere in January of 2026, a year later. This model of more episodes cuts down on the gap between seasons.”

This is music to my ears, personally — and if you’re a fan of good TV shows, it should be music to yours as well. Anyone who tuned into, say, “Severance” during its first season on Apple TV+ remembers the painful three-year wait between the first two seasons (though that was, admittedly, partly due to the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes), and Bloys’ commitment to ensuring that something as popular and high-quality as “The Pitt” airs annually should be applauded. In the heyday of network TV and before the advent of streaming, fans used to get seasons of their favorite TV series that spanned 24 episodes (or more!), and as showrunners like R. Scott Gemmill continue moving to streamers like HBO Max, that’s becoming a lost art. “The Pitt,” I should say, is perfect at 15 episodes (24 wouldn’t really make sense within the show’s framework, in which each episode is a “real” hour), but the point is that committing to a regular release schedule is encouraging news for the TV landscape, especially when audiences get something as genuinely great as “The Pitt.”

“The Pitt” season 2 premieres in January 2026, and a specific release date hasn’t been revealed yet. The first season is streaming now in its entirety on HBO Max.