From left: Shawn Hatosy and Noah Wyle in 'The Pitt' season 2 finale.

Warrick Page/HBO Max

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“I’ve seen so many people die that I feel like it’s leaching something from my soul,” Robby says.

Though this mental health storyline might seem extreme, as showrunner R. Scott Gemmill explains, “it’s a real thing,” with the American College of Emergency Physicians reporting that roughly 300-400 physicians a year die by suicide and the American Medical Association noting that “physicians are at a higher risk of suicide and suicidal ideation than the general population.”

And, as Gemmill argues, after a season of Robby rejecting conventional therapy for the issues he identified at the end of season one, the attending physician’s season two storyline, “shows what can happen if you don’t take the time to resolve mental health issues.”

“Robby is someone who is very good at giving advice and very poor at taking it, and he hasn’t been dealing with his own mental health issues,” Gemmill says. “As a result, they have exacerbated and got to a point where he’s really in a bad head space, and he needs to take steps to get better, or things are going to get worse, and he could end up like a statistic.”

Though Robby has tense exchanges with a number of his colleagues in the final hours of his July 4th shift, it’s Abbot who’s finally able to engage him in a conversation about his mental health.

“Abbot is similar to Robby. He has been experiencing some of the same suicidal ideations,” Hatosy says of the night shift attending who Robby found on the roof in The Pitt‘s pilot episode. “He’s also a character on the show that has has had to manage the stress in the same way that Robby’s has. They are understaffed. There’s not enough funding to take care of everything coming through the door, and that wears on on these attending positions. They are very similar but very different at the same time how they handle things. And Robby respects Abbot.”

Though Abbot shares why he’s held on despite losing his leg and his wife and advises that Robby find a way to “dance through the darkness,” Hatosy argues it’s all of the interactions Robby has at the end of his shift — chatting with Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) about her future, talking to Dana (Katherine LaNasa), Langdon (Patrick Ball) insisting he needs help and saying he saw a lot of guys like Robby in rehab — as well as the pair’s experience performing an emergency c-section and Robby spending a quiet moment with baby Jane Doe that hopefully keep him from a dangerous, final motorcycle ride.

Hatosy reveals that he and Wyle talked extensively about their last scene together in season two.

“Coming into that last scene, we spent a lot of time with [The Pitt executive producer] John [Wells], who was directing, and Scott just sort of figuring out exactly where the dynamic came to,” Hatosy says. “And I thought it was really important to say that even though Abbot is under the impression that he is also doing the work, his hobby that his therapist recommended was golf but he’s off working as a SWAT medic and getting shot at. So again, very similar paths. It’s a death wish and it’s something that Abbot believes he’s in the process of working through. Maybe instead of once a week, he needs to go twice a week until he figures that out. But at least he’s talking about it.”

Going into The Pitt‘s already ordered season three, Gemmill hopes that Robby finally gets some of the treatment he needs.

“Hopefully, season three is all about that mental health journey and seeing him finally admitting to needing help and seeking it out and set

The Pitt Season 2 End Explained: R. Scott Gemmill, Shawn Hatosy, More