Noah Wyle just teased what fans can expect from the third season of The Pitt, including a major storyline change.

While speaking with Vanity Fair, Wyle opened up about the evolution that the hit HBO Max series has taken across its first two seasons and how The Pitt season 3 will continue that progression.

If a main plot point of the first season was the doctor being the patient, and the second season focused on doctors not being very good patients, then season 3 will focus on how “doctors benefit from being patients.”

Mental health has been a dominant discussion on The Pitt throughout the series. Wyle explained that “we’re watching this mental health journey take place from total denial to acceptance of a problem to baby steps up and out of his proverbial pit.”

So the theme of doctors benefiting from being the patients and making sure to take care of their own mental health while navigating an extremely stressful job will be very prevalent when The Pitt returns.

That’s what Wyle and the rest of the writers and producers are currently working on as the actor himself gets ready to write the script for the third episode.

“Season 1 is the doctor is the patient. Season 2, doctors don’t make good patients. Season 3, doctors benefit from being patients. So that’s really where our head is at now: We’re watching this mental health journey take place from total denial to acceptance of a problem to baby steps up and out of his proverbial pit. That’s what we’re working on.”

After all, a character like Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, whom Wyle plays, has faced major internal struggles as the trauma from the COVID-19 pandemic continues to roil his mind. It’s been built into the backbone of the series since the very beginning.

Robby and his fellow doctors, nurses and other medical professionals have been holding on to that trauma without being able to process it. It gets “buried in our subconscious that keeps wanting to come up and manifest itself in behavior that is less than graceful and less than our highest self,” Wyle said.

“I wanted to do a character that would sort of represent a collective feeling that we’ve all felt since COVID, of having gone through something significant and not having had the time to process it, having something buried in our subconscious that keeps wanting to come up and manifest itself in behavior that is less than graceful and less than our highest self.”

When it comes to other aspects of The Pitt season 3 that Wyle can’t wait to see his character go through, the actor revealed that the dynamic between Robby and Dr. Frank Langdon is something he wants to explore more of.

The first season saw the two doctors clash when Langdon stole medication and, later, went to rehab before resuming his role at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center in The Pitt season 2. “Langdon was very much the protégé who disappointed the mentor,” Wyle noted.

Robby and Langdon’s rapport was strained when the latter returned, and “keeping those characters apart, almost like polar ends of a magnet, was a great device in season 2.” However, The Pitt season 3 now presents an opportunity for them to come back together but in a way that flips the script, so to speak.

When the show returns to HBO Max, Robby will have already been away on his sabbatical, and he’s coming back in a different mental state.

“We don’t know what kind of rung rust he has as a physician or what type of shame or embarrassment” he’s experiencing, Wyle teased, before adding that Robby “wasn’t acting [his] best self” at the hospital the last time he stepped foot through those doors, so there could be some metaphorical landmines for the character to navigate, which includes Langdon.

“There’s an interesting parallel between the Robby and Langdon characters because in season 1, Langdon was very much the protégé who disappointed the mentor. And that betrayal falls on a couple levels. And season 2, Robby was not necessarily welcoming to Langdon coming back.

“So keeping those characters apart, almost like polar ends of a magnet, was a great device in season 2. You wanna bring those characters together somehow in season 3, and yet it’s gonna be flipped. Robby’s coming back now to an environment he hasn’t been in for a couple months. We don’t know what kind of ring rust he has as a physician or what type of shame or embarrassment. He’s walking back into an environment that he wasn’t acting [his] best self at the last time he was in. That’s one relationship I’m really excited about exploring.”

Wyle’s co-stars on The Pitt include Patrick Ball, Katherine LaNasa, Fiona Dourif, Taylor Dearden, Isa Briones, Gerran Howell, Shabana Azeez and Ayesha Harris.

Each season of The Pitt unfolds in real time over the course of one shift in the ER. The most recent season took place on the 4th of July, while the third installment will jump the story forward to November, just as the holiday season is about to get into full swing and as temperatures start turning colder.

As Wyle revealed, he and the rest of the team are still in the early stages of breaking the storylines for The Pitt season 3, with filming expected to get underway sometime this month.