Before Chicago Med season 11 began this fall, fans were thrown a curveball with the sudden exit of Marlyne Barrett. Since the first season, the actress had played Gaffney's charge nurse Maggie Lockwood, but after the completion of season 10, Barrett left the show due to personal matters. However, Maggie has only been mentioned a handful of times in season 11.
In the season premiere, Maggie was name-dropped, but her absence from the hospital wasn't explained. The series established that Maggie was no longer working at Gaffney but didn't elaborate on where she went, what she's doing, or if she would ever be returning to assume her position in the ED. But the penultimate episode Chicago Med season 11 unexpectedly dropped her name again.
Asher mentions Maggie in Chicago Med season 11 episode 20
During the penultimate episode of Chicago Med season 11, Asher and Lovell team up to help Olivia when she returns to the hospital because she couldn't feel her baby moving. Asher discovers that the baby stopped moving because Olivia's in the early stages of labor, but a sonogram also reveals that the baby is in a breech position, which leaves them with two options for a solution.
Since Olivia doesn't want to have a C-section, Asher goes for the second option, which entails her and Lovell working together to manually pivot the baby's position from the outside. While grabbing a slanted block to place under Olivia to elevate her pelvic area, Asher explains that she learned this technique from Maggie, a former midwife who used to be a nurse at Gaffney.
The keyword in Asher mentioning Maggie seems to be "used to" when it comes to Maggie's status at the hospital. Obviously, with her not appearing at all this season and not being mentioned for weeks, we didn't expect that she was somehow still working at Gaffney. But Asher's name-drop seems to confirm that we shouldn't anticipate a sudden return from Maggie any time soon.
Asher mentioned Maggie with a lot of warmth and a smile on her face at the memory of her old friend and former colleague. While watching the season's second to last episode, viewers probably weren't thinking we would catch an update, no matter how brief, on Maggie, and I think I speak for all fans when I say that her name caught me by surprise. I didn't see it coming at all.
It's not even as if this was a major update that offered any sort of explanation on her whereabouts. We still know absolutely nothing. We don't know why Maggie left Gaffney, where she went, what she's doing—nothing. From a certain standpoint, providing few details about her off-camera storyline makes it easier for Maggie to be written back into the show later. But that's not fair to viewers.
Maggie played a large part in Chicago Med as a main character and was a central figure in the Gaffney ED. While it's completely understandable for the show's producers to protect Barrett's privacy, it's difficult for viewers when a character simply vanishes without a trace and without any explanation. How long can the show go without doing right by the character?
There's a case to be made that Chicago Med dropped Maggie's name in the penultimate episode of season 11 as a means to foreshadow that she could be coming back. Television series have a tendency to start talking about characters before they're introduced, or re-introduced, but there's no way to know whether that's the case or if this was a simple one-off casual nod to a former character.
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