Chicago Med season 10 episode 7 recap: Archer's future becomes unclear

Could Chicago Med be about to lose yet another longtime cast member? That’s the fear at the forefront of fans’ minds as we head into the fall finale of NBC’s hit medical drama which seemed to pave the way for Steven Weber to walk away from the series. 

Throughout season 10, we’ve seen Weber’s Dr. Dean Archer struggling to find his footing at Med after being forced into co-running the ED alongside the new co-head of the ED, Dr. Caitlin Lenox. From the start, Lenox and Archer have struggled to see eye-to-eye on just about everything when it’s come to running the ED together. The end result has been a lot of friction between the two which came to a head in the seventh episode of the season, “Family Matters.” 

After Lenox made the decision to operate on a patient before his parents arrived to give consent and the patient died on the table during his operation, Archer made it clear he did not agree with Lenox’s decision. In his words, her actions were what resulted in the teen’s death before his parents could arrive at the hospital in order to give consent for the surgery. 

He made his qualms known and tensions in the ED hit an all-time high between the coheads, making it clear that the two could no longer work together to oversee the ED. Through the episode, it became clear Goodwin was going to have to make a decision to have just one of the two doctors run the ED and, at the end of the day, that doctor ended up being Dr. Lenox. 

As Goodwin informed Lenox as the episode came to a close, most doctors chose not to take sides and gave political feedback when she asked them about the state of the ED. However, there was one doctor who chose to speak openly about her thoughts: Dr. Howard, who sang Lenox’s praises to Goodwin in sharing how Lenox had pushed her to become a better physician and taught her more in just a few weeks than she learned in four years of school. 

Following this conversation, Goodwin informed Lenox she would become the sole head of the ED and that Archer would return to being a standard attending at the hospital. Her first question was whether Goodwin had informed Archer and we learn she spoke with him before meeting with Lenox, which could perhaps explain why he finally showed up at Molly's after being "pinned" during the shift -- an ED game that recently started in which everyone secretly clips a safety pin on their colleagues and whoever has the pin at the end of the shift has to buy a round of drinks at Molly's on payday.

When Archer arrived, something seemed off but we didn't know at the time he had come to drink his sorrows away after learning of his demotion.

A demotion seemed bad, but it was the promo for the fall finale that called Archer’s future into question when we see him showing Hannah a letter of resignation suggesting he’s prepared to walk away from Med following his demotion. 

It’s going to be interesting to see whether Archer follows through on his plans to resign from Med or if perhaps he’ll choose to remain a part of the ED team, despite his demotion. All we know is that we’re quite concerned about whether Archer could become the latest doctor to check out of Med.

Don’t miss new episodes ofChicago Med Wednesdays at 8/7c on NBC and streaming on Peacock!