SPOILER ALERT: The following reveals major plot points from HBO Max‘s The Pitt, Season 2, Episode 4.
After three episodes in Season 2, fans of HBO Max’s hit medical drama The Pitt learn what happened to Dr. Heather Collins, the character played by Tracy Ifeachor. Ifeachor’s exit from the series was confirmed in July.
A big part of Collins’ storyline in Season 1 was around her pregnancy and later miscarriage. She kept the news of her pregnancy a secret, hoping to share her happiness with colleagues after hitting the 12-week mark, the end of the first trimester. Sadly, she suffered a miscarriage in Episode 7 while on shift at the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center. Hours later, she helps a pregnant patient bring a child into the world.
Later that same day in Episode 11, Collins tells her former partner, Robby (Noah Wyle), what she’d gone through, and he insists she go home early, which she does. That decision leaves Collins out of the final episode, as everyone was dealing with the fallout after a mass shooter opened fire at a local festival.
Tracy Ifeachor and Caitlin Duffy in ‘The Pitt’ Season 1
HBO Max
In the fourth episode of Season 2, Whitaker (Gerran Howell) is looking after Louie, a patient who is a regular at this ED and needs a dentist referral to help with an aching tooth. The patient asks Whitaker if Collins is around, as she normally helped him with referrals, leaving Whitaker to explain why she would not be able to.
Whitaker explains that Collins finished up her residency and moved to Portland, where she took the job of attending physician at a new hospital. He shares further that Collins is in the process of adopting a baby, so returning to her hometown made sense as she’d have family nearby. Unbeknownst to Whitaker, Robby had popped his head into the room and overheard everything.
“That was not how it was originally scripted. I was not supposed to be in that scene,” Wyle said of the moment he opens the door as Whitaker is telling Louie about Collins. “We talked about it right before we shot it. I thought, ‘What if I put my head in and I only heard that little part?’ Then you could get Robby’s reaction to what she’s up to now, and see the melancholy, the road not traveled. And also good for her that she’s finding happiness and doing well. He didn’t have the capacity to be who she needed him to be. So hopefully she’s found that for herself,” he added.
Series creator, showrunner, and executive producer R. Scott Gemmill shares further insight into the scene.
“That storyline was there from the get-go. In fact, some of those scenes near the very end were actually audition scenes, so they had been around for forever. It’s a teaching hospital, so med students and doctors and nurses alike come and go. That just seemed like a really interesting story of a single woman who’s a very well-established professional, who has everything in her life that seems to be going well, but the one thing she really wants is something she’s having trouble with,” he said.
Adding, “Even though she’s a doctor, she can’t cure the issue that she’s having. And then the revelation that it might have been Robby’s baby is obviously a bit of a bombshell. She had never told him, because she wasn’t sure about the relationship. She wasn’t even sure about being a mother at that time, and obviously, that had some impact on him as well that day.”
When asked if Robby already had knowledge of where Collins had gone and her plans for a new baby, while eavesdropping on Whitaker, Gemmill confirms he did.
“He had heard that she’s finally going to have the child that she wanted. That was the one thing that seemed to be missing from her life, and now hearing that she’s going to get that is, even though he’s not with her and not his child, I think he can take satisfaction in that,” he said.
While it’s heartbreaking that Collins’ story did not continue, at least she gets a happy ending.
The first four episodes of The Pitt Season 2 and all of Season 1 are available to stream now via HBO Max.
Watch our interview with Gemmill and Wyle above.
