When Chicago Med signed off the air in 2025, the show left fans with quite a lot to process both with its fall finale and the episodes that led up to it.
Of course, the biggest cliffhanger of the fall finale came as Dr. Caitlin Lenox’s life was left hanging in the balance after she made quite a controversial decision. Fearing that her former patient’s life was in danger, Lenox went to the address on file where she found Faye at the bottom of the basement stairs, severely injured. Before she could call for help, Devin, Faye’s abusive husband, showed up and knocked Lenox out.
The winter premiere will look to unpack the fallout of Lenox’s actions, as well as advancing many of the season’s ongoing storylines. This includes Hannah and Dean’s continued struggle with navigating their new normal as parents-to-be, the introduction of a new love triangle (and official confirmation that another is officially dead), and the promise of more familiar faces checking back into Gaffney Chicago Med.
Ahead of the Chicago Med winter premiere, One Chicago Center sat down with showrunner Allen MacDonald to unpack the events of the fall finale and take a look at what’s to come as season 11 continues!
One Chicago Center: I’d love to begin by discussing the fall finale’s most shocking cliffhanger. You’ve spoken before about Dr. Caitlin Lenox being one of your favorite characters to write for, and you truly outdid yourself with her fall finale storyline. Can you walk me through your approach to charting her emotional and ethical trajectory across the first seven episodes, which led to the events of the winter finale with Lenox, Devin and Faye, and what can you tell us about the fallout from the finale?
Allen MacDonald: Yeah, I think because she found out about her prion disease diagnosis in the season finale last year, that coming into the season, her way of dealing with it was just to pretend that issue wasn't there. [She] just ignores it and moves on as she always has. And I think what she found in the season premiere this year when she was treating those two sisters that had been injured at the rave, is that life is here to be experienced, and she's not sick yet.
She knows she will be someday, but it might be in six months, it might be in 15 or 20 years. So, why not try to soak up as much life as she can, why not try to have more visceral experiences? And that's what she's been doing, so far this season.
But there's a darker element to this a little bit, which is, I don't wanna say she has a death wish, but she's definitely been in risk-taking mode. And her behavior has been getting riskier and riskier, and I think risk is like a drug to her. Every time she takes the risk, it takes a bigger risk to give her that high. Ultimately, in the fall finale that high was danger.
Now that's not the only reason she went over there. I think the main reason she went over there is because she was infuriated by this domestic abuse situation, and she felt that if she didn't do something, nobody would, and Faye could be dead in that house. So she felt like she didn't have a choice, she needed to take action. But I think there's another part of her that's just like playing with fate a little bit, testing fate, and putting herself in a dangerous situation, because why not?
One thing I’ve observed since you took over as showrunner is how there’s been a noticeable effort to weave returning characters into the narrative of the show in a very organic way. Is this something we’ll continue to see as season 11 continues, and are there perhaps any returns you can speak to or hint at?
Yeah, I mean, you can expect to see the Goodwin children again. You can expect to see Sean Archer again. We are going to very quickly here meet Mark Asher, who is Hannah's father. We've never seen him before, so he's not really a returning character.
There's still more story to tell with Jeremy and Esme. Jeremy's trying to stay alive to see his baby daughter be born.
When you refer to Will and Natalie and bringing back characters also from the past, and I haven't made a secret of the fact that. Although I'm biased and I love the current cast the most because they're the cast I work with, but I also love the original cast. I would like to, over the next few years, bring back as many of them as I can. So you should expect to see more OG characters coming back in the future, but I can't tell you when because I really don't know yet.
There's a lot to unpack this season with Dean, Hannah, and Mitch, especially through these first couple of episodes where Dean and Hannah are trying to navigate this very difficult dynamic and co-parenting when they have different views. Then, of course, now Mitch is single again, and so there’s the question in some of the fans' minds of whether he and Hannah might reconcile. What can you tease about that that trio going forward?
Well, I have a rule that I won't tease something, or suggest something that I know is absolutely not going to happen. It's not really a love triangle anymore because Mitch is out and, you know, Hannah's pregnant with Archie's child.
They've agreed to be two friends having a baby, which Hannah says multiple times this season, almost to assure herself that that's what is going to be the future because that's the safest way forward for her. I think that Archer and Hannah have a lot of complicated emotions for each other that I think they do love each other. If it's romantic love, I don't think they've figured that out yet, but there's nothing more intimate and emotional than having a child together, and they're experiencing that, and they're putting up all these rules and these fences.
It's a terrible way to put it, but the events of the season are going to knock a lot of those fences down and force them to confront issues that they're kind of avoiding at the moment. As far as Mitch, he and Hannah are done as far as I'm concerned.
Well, he, he's at least got his, his bromance with Frost going, which has been really kind of fun to see that, that friendship really blossom this season. Will we keep exploring that too in the rest of the episodes ahead?
Yes, we absolutely will. I mean as far as I'm concerned that's the central love story of the season, Ripley and Frost. (Laughs)
And speaking of Frost, the winter finale put him directly in this new love triangle with Novak and Naomi. What can we expect from that dynamic as the season continues?
Well, I just said a few minutes ago that one triangle is dead and it is now going to be replaced by a new love triangle.
I think that you can expect to see a lot of crossover with Novak, onto Med, and with Frost on Fire. I think that both Novak and Frost are interested in each other, but they're also interested in other people on their individual shows. How that's going to play out? Who knows, but it's definitely going to be a lot of fun.
Don't miss the Chicago Med winter premiere on January 7 at 8/7c on NBC!