‘Chicago Med’: Does Charles Die? Boss & Oliver Platt Explain His Fate

There are only two OGs still left on Chicago Med, now in its 11th season and coming back for a 12th, but the life of one hangs in the balance in the Wednesday, April 8, episode.

At the end of the previous episode, Charles (Oliver Platt) had a stroke, and now, in “Altered States,” which features some of Platt’s best work on the show, his fate is revealed, but not before a trippy journey in his mind. TV Insider spoke with Platt and showrunner Allen MacDonald about what happens to Charles and what’s next. Warning: Spoilers for Chicago Med Season 11 Episode 16 ahead!

First, the good news: Charles survives! It’s hard to imagine a world in which Chicago Med kills off Charles, even if Platt doesn’t stay until the final episode, whenever that is. And MacDonald confirms that his dying was not ever a real possibility.

Quips Platt, “Didn’t you just congratulate us about a pickup? And how did I respond to that?” (The answer is very positive.)

Related

'Chicago Med' Boss & Oliver Platt Talk Shocking Charles Ending

But it’s not until the end of the episode that it’s revealed, and it’s a long way to get there. First, Sharon (S. Epatha Merkerson) finds him, then Archer (Steven Weber) and Abrams (Brennan Brown) perform a risky surgery. And like every TV show does when it comes to a main character in danger like this, Charles flatlines on the table.

But Med has a clever way to handle that, with the trip through his mind we take with Charles throughout the episode. He sees a younger version of Ripley, then the young played by Luke Mitchell, and while their relationship has very much improved in the present, this one taunts him and calls him a fraud. Charles then goes through his life with his exes (and the problems with each) before ending up facing his parents. His mom reminds him that she died an hour after he accused her of driving his father and brother to early graves. He insists he was haunted by that. She says he’s always too hard on himself, that he always thinks it’s his job to make everything and everybody OK. As he’s drawn to the garage by smoke coming under the door, she checks that he knows she always loved him.

In the garage, he finds his father and tries to stop him from dying by suicide. His father assures him his “dark mood” wasn’t his mother’s fault, and Charles explains he was depressed; while back then, psychiatrists weren’t equipped to deal with it, now they are. He wants to get his father the help he needs, but it’s too late. And when Charles is trapped in the car with his father, first his daughter Anna (Hannah Riley), then Ripley, and finally Sharon breaks the glass with a fire extinguisher, and that’s when they get him back in the O.R. and can complete the surgery successfully.

Platt loved getting to dive into that material for his character. “One of the things about my philosophy, and I know Dick Wolf feels the same way about this, is that with procedurals — and I just love this approach — it’s like you want to concentrate on the story and you want to learn about the characters, in this case, the doctors who work at Gaffney, through these stories,” he explains. “Nothing to me is more boring, especially in a pilot, than when you have just these pages, scads and scads of exposition about backstory and bio. So, you give that stuff away in crumbs.”

He continues that he and MacDonald both figured that doing so for Charles in this episode in Season 11 would be a way to do so, especially for “those wonderful, extraordinarily loyal members of our audience who have been with us the whole time. They’re going to be really interested in some of this stuff,” Platt says. “I want to think that the way that this stuff is dramatized is hopefully actually dramatic. Only after the fact, you go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s what happened to Dr. Charles,’ or ‘That’s why he’s like this,’ or ‘That’s who his mother is.'”

George Burns Jr/NBC

Adds MacDonald, ‘I loved the character so much when I first got the job [for Season 10] and started watching the whole show, but he was so composed and so gifted at what he did that to me, people that are that driven and that good at something are driven there by something probably traumatic. And I wanted to get underneath the hood on that. And Oliver was very much in favor of doing that and showing, for lack of a better term, a more vulnerable side to Dr. Charles.”

The episode ends with Sharon sitting by Charles’ bedside when he wakes; she’d sent his daughter home after she’d been awake almost 48 hours. When he mentions a fire extinguisher, she worries something’s wrong with his speech. But then he tells her where he is and complains that there’s no Jello. Though he jokes about being done with the place, she assures him it’s not done with him.

So, what does Charles’ recovery look like? Well, first of all, he’ll be back at work perhaps sooner than you might have thought.

“I’m happy that we get to talk about it a little bit because we were really good — we’re always as tight as we can possibly be on the medicine all across the show and all the stories,” Platt says. “When it turned out that I’m literally coming back to work two weeks later, this is medically accurate for the intervention [tPA, tissue plasminogen activator] that Dean Archer and Dr. Abrams execute. It’s one where basically they literally stop the stroke in its tracks and essentially stop it from happening. I mean, it’s literally like it never occurred.”

MacDonald explains that in doing so early enough, “it prevents there from being any permanent side effects or any permanent debilitating symptoms. So the reality, as Oliver says, is that you can return to work two weeks later. We were assured of that. And of course, we wanted to get Dr. Charles back in action, too, so that worked out well for us.”

Adds Platt, “Because there’s plenty of story left to tell.” That’s a relief!

What did you think of this deep dive into Charles? Were you worried Med might kill him off? Let us know in the comments section below.

Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC