Pittsburgh-set HBO Max ER drama “The Pitt” may not have earned the most Emmy nominations last month, but it did well for what is in many ways an elevated broadcast network drama on a streaming service.

While Apple TV+’s “Severance” is the front-runner for best drama with 27 nominations, “The Pitt” and its 13 nods remains in the running with experts at Hollywood awards site GoldDerby.com giving “The Pitt” a 66% chance of taking home the top drama prize.

Regardless of how the Emmys turn out on Sept. 14, what’s likely of greater interest to “Pitt” fans is what to expect in Season 2, slated to premiere in January (exact date not yet announced).

Season 2 setting

Production began on Season 2 in mid-June at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, Calif., where the majority of the series is shot. Some cast and crew will return to Pittsburgh to film exterior scenes for one week next month, just as the show filmed locally in September 2024.

Producers confirmed the new season, again set over the course of one 15-hour day, takes place over a Fourth of July weekend roughly 10 months after the events of the Season 1 finale. The second season premiere will occur on the first day back at work for Dr. Langdon (Patrick Ball), who was sent to rehab at the end of Season 1 after stealing drugs from the hospital.

Setting two themes

Season 1 of “The Pitt” dealt with many salient themes, including an overburdened health care system and systemic injustice in health care with some stories inspired by the experiences of Pittsburgh doctors.

Writers on “The Pitt,” including star Noah Wyle, start each season by talking to doctors about what issues they’re seeing. For Season 2, producers talked to immigration, autism and PTSD specialists, among others.

Season 2 will address the breakdown viewers saw Dr. Robby (Wyle) go through near the end of Season 1.

“Part of … Season 2 is seeing Dr. Robby acknowledge that he needs help, that he hasn’t gotten the help he needs and to encourage his co-workers to seek help to take away that stigma,” showrunner R. Scott Gemmill said during a recent panel discussion, per Deadline.com. “One of the movements afoot is to make a mental health check sort of mandatory for health care workers. And that way, if everyone has to do it, then that takes away the stigma. So doctors who do have a problem or who fall off, whether through addictions, as an example, there are programs that will help them get help and get back to becoming a doctor again.”

“Resilience,” a buzzword that has echoed through the offices of doctors, especially pediatricians, in recent years, may also come into play.

“Resilience is just a fancy word for hope,” Gemmill said. “No matter how bad it is, hopefully, we offer some hope at the end of the day. That’s the core of ‘The Pitt.’ People come into ER on their worst day. No one wants to be there. Providing the care that the doctors and the nurses and the techs do, you give someone hope. That’s why we come to (an) ER. You hope you are going to get better. To me, resilience is about keeping hope alive as long as possible.”

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Who’s back

Pretty much all of the people playing Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center cast members are expected to return.

In the first-season finale, fan favorite Nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa) expressed a desire to permanently hang up her scrubs after she was assaulted by a patient midway through the season.

“We want (viewers) to be worried enough to come back and see if she’s on the show or not,” Gemmill teased in late March.

LaNasa, who is up for an Emmy Award for her role, already has been spotted on set filming Season 2, so Dana clearly had a change of heart.

“Everyone has been promoted or graduated to the next level,” Gemmill told TVLine.com earlier this year. “So we’ll see everybody, for the most part, and some people might be working different hours and different shifts, but it’s pretty much the same crew.”

Who’s out

Dr. Heather Collins (Tracy Ifeachor) will not be back. Some fans were in an uproar when that news broke last month. Wyle chalked up the character’s departure to a story decision, saying he and the cast “have all been sort of amused by the speculation about what everyone thinks might be a reason.”

“But truthfully, we loved the actress. We enjoyed having her with us very much,” Wyle told Deadline.com. “She’s gotten really big, and we will miss her.”

Who’s new

There will be many new faces when the second season begins, including third-year medical student Joy (Irene Choi), fourth-year med student James (Lucas Iverson), nursing school grad Emma (Laëtitia Hollard), an ER attending physician (Sepideh Moafi), an unhoused patient (Charles Baker) and a patient (Lawrence Robinson) who turns a soccer injury into a possible romance with one of the doctors.

What about the Pittsburgh of it all?

“The Pitt” executive producers John Wells, a 1979 Carnegie Mellon University grad, and Gemmill said they intend to keep Pittsburgh in “The Pitt” in Season 2.

“We do want to lean into the Pittsburgh of it all, because they’ve been great to us, and it’s a great city, a fundamental element of our show,” Wells said. “We are hoping that, now that people have seen the show, we might get some movement from Major League Baseball or from the NFL to allow us to (use clothing with team logos on characters). When do you walk down the street in Pittsburgh and not see a Pirates or a Steelers something?”

“As a Canadian,” Gemmill joked, “it’s more important to see the Penguins (logo).”

In late March, Gemmill appeared in a Zoom interview clad in gear emblazoned with the name of Pittsburgh band The Clarks, a group he recently discovered.

“I actually just told my sound or my music supervisor that there’s a song of theirs I want to try and use next year for our show, ‘Better Off Without You,’ ” Gemmill said. “I’m excited if we can do that.”

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