‘The Pitt’ Star Noah Wyle Unpacks Directing Tragic Episode 6 Death and Its ‘Sacred’ Aftermath

Note: This story contains spoilers from “The Pitt” Season 2, Episode 6.

“The Pitt” suffered its first major death in Season 2 and Noah Wyle was in the director’s chair to handle the beginning, middle and end.

There have been plenty of deaths in “The Pitt,” but Louie’s (Ernest Harden Jr.) in Episode 6 is likely to hit harder after having also appeared in Season 1 as an alcoholic and “frequent flyer” of the hospital. He crashed at the end of Episode 5, and despite Robby and Langdon’s (Patrick Ball) best efforts, he died the first few minutes into Episode 6. Wyle told TheWrap that while directing the episode he wanted the throughline to be seeing Louie’s body going from devoid of “humanism” to almost “sacred.”

“I had a really lovely plan with Jojo Coelho, our DP, and we wanted to photograph Louie and go from what I call the profane to the sacred,” Wyle said. “When we first see him, he’s covered in blood, and he’s almost like a piece of meat that they’re cleaning and it’s completely devoid of personality, of humanism. Dana’s going through the motions of teaching how to clean a body, but it’s all got to be done at the emotional arm’s length that you need to have in order to clean a body as often as they clean bodies. But in terms of how we wanted the audience to relate to Louis, I wanted to go the next time you see him, he’s a little bit more clean. The next time you see him, you see part of him. He’s covered with a white sheet, and you see his hand.”

Through the episode, as the other doctors are getting back to their other patients, Dana (Katherine LaNasa) and Emma (Laëtitia Hollard) are visited over and over as they clean and prep Louie’s body. The Pitt has started doing testimonials — where doctors and nurses can say a few words about patients they lost — and Louie will likely draw a bit of a crowd.

By the time the episode wraps up, Wyle said he wanted there to be the fullest sense of who Louie truly was by episode’s end.

He continued: “You really don’t get a full sense of the man until the very end, after we’ve done our testimonials and filled in the missing pieces of what we all remember and what we knew him to be, and Robby giving a little bit more of Louie’s life story gives context to a lot of the things that we’ve only heard in piecemeal up until now. Those types of things are really lovely as a storyteller, to go back and sort of pepper through and directorial I just wanted that to be consistent, so that when we finally get that last image of Louie, we’re finally taking the full measure of the man. We present the man and all of his dignity, as much as we can afford him in that moment – and then it’s tick tock. We got to go get out there, because there’s other Louis’ to save.”

On top of all the drama of losing Louie, Robby and Langdon also finally work together trying to save their longtime patient. Robby had exiled Langdon to work in triage for the earliest hours of his first shift back after being in rehab. Despite Langdon wanting to talk with Robby, Robby has been ducking him all morning. Louie’s crash brings them together, which Wyle says is a testament to their ability to “compartmentalize and focus” but also begins to scratch at the surface of their issues.

“There’s no getting around the fact that Louis was the patient who was the catalyst for Langdon’s whole drug addiction being exposed,” Wyle said. “He didn’t expect to come back and treat him. He certainly didn’t expect to come back and have him die. If we’re looking for possible triggers to relapse your addiction – this is a big one. and yet there’s this tension.”

He finished: “The student feels like he failed the teacher. The teacher feels like he failed the student. Neither one of them want to admit that their perceptions were off, and to a large extent, Langdon represents this Examined Life, which is kind of like kryptonite to Robby.”

“The Pitt” releases new episodes Thursdays on HBO Max.

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