EXCLUSIVE: Paging Dr. Will Halstead.
Chicago Med fans have one more reason to look forward to Chicago Med‘s upcoming eleventh season, as OG Nick Gehlfuss has set his big return in a guest-starring role, sources close to production tell Deadline. It is as yet unknown how many episodes he will appear in.
Chicago Med returns to NBC on October 1 with all-new episodes. The series is produced by Universal Television and Wolf Entertainment.
Gehlfuss starred as Dr. Will Halstead from the show’s premiere in 2015 until his departure in the Season 8 finale. When fans last saw Halstead, he got his happily ever after in Seattle, where he reconnected with his true love, Dr. Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto). The pair rode off into the sunset with her son Owen (Ari Morgan), making Halstead officially a stepdad.
Hopefully, Will will share an update about how his life has been going off-screen in his new city and with his family. Could a wedding have taken place? How and why he returns to Gaffney Chicago Medical Center is being kept under wraps. I’m secretly hoping he is connected to his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Hannah Asher’s (Jessy Schram) pregnancy storyline, because it would be a full-circle moment for them.
For anyone who has forgotten during these months that the show has been off the air, Asher revealed in Season 10 that she is pregnant. In the final beats of the finale, it is implied that Dr. Dean Archer (Steven Weber) is the father.
However, doctors often visit other hospitals due to their specialized areas of expertise. Halstead’s work history includes working as a doctor in the Sudan, then as a plastic surgeon in New York, before pivoting to an emergency room physician at Gaffney. In Season 1, he operated on a pregnant woman, but let’s not put that bad juju out there.
When Gehlfuss departed in 2023, he spoke to Deadline about his decision to leave the show after 8 seasons, and leaving the door open for more in the future.
“We’ve actually talked about that, and that was part of the decision in how we exited Will,” he said about a possible return. “I wanted that to be the case, but of course, I would have been okay with whatever the writers felt necessary for the story. So I’m glad that they preserve that possibility. They said outright, ‘You know, we’d be happy to have you come back whenever you want.’ And it’s really touching.”
Gehlfuss starred in a total of 202 One Chicago episodes, including crossovers with Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., the latter of which starred Jesse Lee Soffer as Detective Jay Halstead, Will’s younger brother. Coincidentally, Soffer and Gehlfuss announced their departures from their respective series just months apart. Soffer has returned to Chicago P.D. as a director.
Season 11 will mark Gehlfuss’s first return in any capacity to the hit NBC medical drama since his 2023 exit.
Gehlfuss is repped by Gersh and MJ Management.