‘Chicago Med’ Boss Talks Lenox’s Dangerous Situation, Major Charles Episode & More

Chicago Med left off with one of its doctors, Lenox (Sarah Ramos), in some serious danger after she went to check on a patient whose abusive husband was in the ED with concerning injuries. But to her shock, he showed up at the house and knocked her unconscious as the fall finale ended.

Now, in the Wednesday, January 7, return, titled “Triple Threat,” we’ll see the aftermath of that. Below, showrunner Allen MacDonald previews what’s to come on Med in 2026, who’s getting a “Book of” episode next, a potential new romance, and more.

We’ve been seeing how her diagnosis has been affecting Lenox all season. We even see it in the fall finale before she leaves at the end, at the beginning when she gets shocked. So how much did that influence why she went to check on Faye the way she did?

Allen MacDonald: It’s a real escalation in how she’s dealing with her prion disease. I think her initial reaction when she found out was depression and kind of shutting down. And then I think she very quickly just clicked back into her normal life. And I think some of the things she learned in the premiere this year, especially when she worked on those two sisters, was that she needs to live her life while she has it, while she has time, and she wants to suck up as much life as she possibly can while she can, because as we talked about before, she could die in a year, year and a half, or she could die in 15 or 20 years. She doesn’t know. And that’s part of the torture of her situation. And so I think she’s living her life, but I also think there’s an angry anxiety in her. And I think that she keeps testing her limits, and I think she keeps pushing the envelope and throwing herself in dangerous situations like the one she does in the fall finale when she goes to Devin [Jack Falahee] and Faye’s [Olivia Nikkanen] house, and then at the end, she gets pistol-whipped by Devin. It’s not that she has a death wish, but she figures if she’s going to die anyway, she can push her luck a little bit because if she ends up getting killed in this situation, well, she’s going to die early anyway.

Related

One Chicago: 11 'Fire,' 'Med' and 'P.D.' Burning Questions for 2026

So what does that mean then for what we’ll see between her and Devin in the midseason premiere? If she is living her life like that?

I will not be commenting further on Lenox beyond stuff that’s already happened.

I really like what you’re doing with Charles (Oliver Platt) this season. We’ve seen him struggle lately. He doesn’t know what’s going on. How are we going to see him going about figuring that out? Because I feel like anyone else, he would be like, OK, here’s the game plan, but when it’s yourself, it’s different, right?

Yeah, and that’s exactly the point is, for the first time, Charles has always been someone who’s so under control, so deliberate about all his decisions. He’s someone that knows the correct behavior and decision and just does it. But this season, we’re starting to see some cracks in that surface. Charles is always in control. One of the things we’re trying to explore this season is what happens when he starts to feel out of control. And some of that has to do with his family history. Some of that has to do with his father killing himself when he was 19. A lot of things are circling back in his life this year, both literally and psychologically, and we intend to delve pretty deeply into that subject in two episodes coming up, one of which, and I think you’re the first person I’m saying this to — we’re doing an episode called “The Book of Charles,” like we did with Archer last year, which means the whole episode will be locked into Charles’s point of view and he will be in every scene. I was talking to Oliver Platt, and he pointed out to me he has never been in every single scene of an episode. When he shoots this episode, it’ll be the most he’s ever been in it.

It seems like sparks were maybe starting to fly between Archer (Steven Weber) and Kingston (Merrin Dungey). What can you say about what could be going on there and then what Hannah (Jessy Schram) could mean for that? Because we talked about before that those old feelings may pop up there, but not necessarily at the same time. And I feel like this would be the perfect time for that.

Well, I would say your suspicions are on the right track. Archer and Hannah have agreed that they’re two friends having a baby, and that’s a line that is echoed several times this season. And so the question is, will they stick to that if Archer becomes involved with somebody else or will it just solidify their feeling that they’re just friends? I’ll give you a little spoiler and say it’s probably more of the former than the latter.

George Burns Jr/NBC

Will there be any more OG cast members appearing this season?

I can’t answer that because I don’t know for sure. I’m always in the process of trying to lure somebody back for a few episodes. I’m not being evasive. I just don’t know for sure.

What about any other returning characters?

No, the answer is no. Right now my focus is trying to bring back as much of the original casts as possible. And that may take me several seasons because I’m not going to do it all at once. I think I’ve said this before, but I want to make sure that when we bring them back that we can pay attention to that character or at most two, like we did with Will [Nick Gehlfuss] and Natalie [Torrey DeVitto] when they came back.

What’s coming up with Sharon (S. Epatha Merkerson)? The stuff with Bert (Gregory Alan Williams) this season…

I’m glad you brought that up. We should definitely talk about Goodwin for a second because S. Epatha Merkerson is phenomenal and super talented. I’m not the first to say that, I’m not the first to notice it, but it bears repeating. Sharon has obviously had a difficult season so far and she’s got Bert’s situation going on. He is in decline. We saw her with her family, we found out a family secret about her oldest son, David [Gbenga Akinnagbe], who is someone I can tease that we’ll probably be seeing again before the end of the season. But she’s got a big heavy emotional load on her shoulders. And I think that what we’re going to see later in the season is that Goodwin is going to have a moment where she’s called upon to basically be the hero, and in a hospital full of doctors, she’s a hero in her own way, but as a former nurse, she knows a few things about medicine as well, more than a few I’d say. And some of those skills are going to be called upon in an upcoming episode.

I love when we see Sharon’s skills as a nurse.

Well, I’ll tell you this, she’s badass in this episode that I’m alluding to very cryptically.

Lori Allen/NBC

We know Ripley (Luke Mitchell) is still figuring out things when it comes to his personal life, but it seems like he’s taking the right steps?

Last season was really Ripley reverting a little bit, regressing to who he was as a teenager. When he was first introduced, there was a real emphasis on the fact that there was an anger in him that had not yet been vanquished in his life, that he had not yet grown past, but he’d learned to cover it up. And Season 10 was all about, what if that comes back up in the present, that behavior? And it did. And that ended up ruining his relationship with Hannah. But the well episode I think was a real trial by fire, and when he came out of that near death experience, I think he was ready to start over. And I think ever since then, he is ready to be an adult, he’s ready to adult, and he maybe is a little too enthusiastic about that. And that’s what Sadie sensed in the fall there and why he pushed things a little too hard and that ended the relationship. So I think that in the wake of that, he’s going to continue to move forward and try — I think he wants to be a father. I think he wants to be a husband. And I think that that’s something that he wants. He just has to find the right person to have those things with.

Chicago Med, Midseason Return, Wednesday, January 7, 8/7c, NBC