‘Chicago Med’ Ups Steven Weber to Series Regular, Adds 2 More to Main Cast for Season 7

Steven Weber as Dean Archer in Chicago Med - Season 6
Elizabeth Sisson/NBC

Chicago Med may have lost two of its original cast members after Season 6, but the cast is growing this fall.

Steven Weber, who recurred as Dr. Dean Archer, has been promoted to series regular — meaning more clashing with the rest of the ED staff! — and two new cast members, Guy Lockard and Kristen Hager, are joining as series regulars for Season 7, Deadline reports. (Interesting tidbit: Weber, Lockard, and Hager all appeared on one of Dick Wolf’s other shows, Law & Order: SVU.)

Lockard’s Dr. Dylan Scott was a police officer before he went into medicine. We’ll have to wait to see if he had any sort of relationship with one of the Chicago P.D. cast. (We wouldn’t be surprised if he has a tense history with Jason Beghe’s Sergeant Hank Voight; many do, in and out of law enforcement.) Though we’ll be meeting him for the first time, he’s not the first to leave behind one career for medicine in the world of One Chicago. Previously, Jeff Clarke (Jeff Hephner) moved from Fire over to Med.

Meanwhile, Hager’s Dr. Stevie Hammer is described as “a brilliant and scrappy emergency room attending physician.” Those are certainly two qualities she’s going to need to work in this ED. We’ll have to see if these two doctors have an easier time fitting in at the hospital than Dean has so far.

These new characters (and the promotion) come after Med said goodbye to Torrey DeVitto’s Dr. Natalie Manning and Yaya DaCosta’s nurse April Sexton. Though both left at the end of Season 6, their exits weren’t very clearly written into the finale. April did get accepted to a nurse practitioners program, though there wasn’t any formal goodbye. And Natalie confessed to being the one to steal clinical trial meds to help her mom after Dr. Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss) took the blame and was fired. We can only assume she gets the same punishment and Will gets rehired, as Gehlfuss is returning as part of the Season 7 cast.

Chicago Med, Season 7 Premiere, Wednesday, September 22, 8/7c, NBC