Chicago Med season 5 premiere takeaways: Never Going Back To Normal

What can Chicago Med fans learn from the season premiere? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago Med season 5, episode 1 takeaways.

What did One Chicago fans learn from the latest Chicago Med episode? Here’s what we took away from this week’s installment, “Never Going Back To Normal.”

“Never Going Back To Normal” featured Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto) suffering a traumatic brain injury, which her boyfriend immediately took advantage of. Plus, two doctors left and a new surgeon arrived, though he’d actually been there the whole time.

If you missed any of this week’s episode or just want a refresher on the events that we’re about to discuss, you can catch up with our Chicago Med recap.

Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:

More from One Chicago Center

• Chicago Med star on 2024 cast changes: ‘Nice to have new faces’
• Here’s the perfect Chicago Fire episode to watch on Thanksgiving
• Ranking the 8 NCIS Thanksgiving episodes from worst to best
• Mark Harmon does NOT have plans to reprise Gibbs on NCIS
• One Chicago stars tease new seasons on IG: ‘Here we come’

1) Is Phillip the new Ava?

Maybe it’s because we’re still reeling from the whole Ava situation, but Phillip Davis (recurring guest star Ian Harding) has now reached Lifetime movie levels of creepy in our book.

By putting the engagement ring on Natalie’s finger and lying to everyone—including her—about them being engaged, he’s now officially evil, manipulative and very weird. So is Chicago Med going to turn him into another dramatic villain, like Ava? Or what’s the endgame here?

And is anyone else wondering why we didn’t spot any of this when he was first introduced last season? Was he like this with his first wife? Now we’re looking back and feeling like either we missed a bunch of signs about his strange behavior, or he’s had a personality shift somewhere in the middle of his story arc. Either way, we’ll be glad when he gets busted.

Watch One Chicago on fuboTV: Watch over 67 live sports and entertainment channels with a 7-day FREE trial!

2) Did Connor deserve the benefit of the doubt?

Dr. Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell) spent his last days at the hospital being accused of murdering his father. It felt off that despite how well-known and how well-liked Connor is, not one person in the episode gave him any kind of empathy here. Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) immediately started treating him as a suspect, based solely on Ava’s testimony, and his conversation with Dr. Isidore Latham (Ato Essandoh) didn’t go much better.

Latham at least had a point about Connor not reporting his suspicions to the police, but it’s more about how both characters didn’t even try to hear out Dr. Rhodes’ point of view. The most he got was Atwater’s comment about how he’s saved a lot of lives around the hospital, and that came after psuedo-interrogating him. Condering how much One Chicago preaches that its characters are a family, it was odd that somebody didn’t at least say “Hey, I don’t believe you did this.”

3) What will happen to Maggie?

Maggie Lockwood (Marlyne Barrett) got a terrible diagnosis in the Chicago Med premiere, and that will obviously be a big storyline for her this season. But what we’re also worried about is what it’ll mean for her place in the show.

She’s always been more of a supporting character, but if Maggie’s off getting treatments now, is she going to be in less scenes or episodes? Will we see April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta), who’s been getting more and more screen time since season 4, end up taking over Maggie’s job? She’s a good character, and we only hope that this storyline doesn’t wind up marginalizing her.

For the latest Chicago Med season 5 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Med category at One Chicago Center.