The Pitt's Noah Wyle On Writing Episode 3 — The Meaning Behind Langdon's Blessing And A Real-World Tragedy

When I sat down with Noah Wyle to unpack the early stretch of "The Pitt" Season 2, we'd already hit our allotted time before Episode 3 came up — an hour he not only stars in, but wrote himself.

But Wyle didn't wrap the interview. He insisted I sit back down.

When we first spoke in late 2024, ahead of the HBO Max medical drama's premiere, we'd touched on the first episode he wrote — Episode 4, in which Robby helped grieving siblings say goodbye to their ailing father by introducing them to Ho'oponopono, a Hawaiian healing ritual passed down by his late mentor.

A year later, our conversation turned to an even quieter moment involving Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) — now newly sober — who, alongside nurse practitioner Donnie Donahue (Brandon Mendez Homer), spends part of Season 2's third episode attempting to dislodge beads from a young boy's nose. The sequence places three fathers in a room together — a configuration that leads to one of the episode's most unexpected moments: Langdon sharing a passage from John O'Donohue's "To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings."

It's a brief exchange, but a revealing one. Langdon offers a passage that has clearly stayed with him — one centered on fatherhood, and reflective of the affirmations he's likely clung to on his road to recovery. He recites it aloud:

May you be gentle and loving, clear and sure. May you trust in the unseen providence that has chosen you to be a family. May you stand sure on your ground, and know that every grace you need will unfold before you — like all the mornings of your life.

When I asked Wyle why he chose to include that particular passage, his answer traced the blessing back to a deeply personal place.

"John O'Donohue is an author that I got turned on to several years ago by David Crosby's widow, Jan — a good friend who was looking for some cones of wisdom to help her through a difficult time," Wyle shared. "His 'Book of Blessings' I found to be just absolutely beautiful. Every one, on every subject, had some really lovely phrasing, and some really lovely wisdom. So he's just been in my back pocket."

That personal connection eventually found its way onto the page.

"When it came time to writing this scene," Wyle continued, "it's three fathers in a room with a kid that won't sit still — and that's a rare thing to get. Donahue is a new father; he's got a baby at home. Langdon's got [slightly] older kids. And fatherhood doesn't come with a manual. So you've got three guys in there talking about their experiences of being fathers."

For Langdon specifically, the moment is rooted in where he is emotionally — and spiritually — at this point in his life.

"Langdon's most recent reference point is this prayer that he's been clinging to," Wyle explained, "to give himself some sense of stability, some sense of purpose, and some clarity about what's important in his life. So it seemed perfectly appropriate that he would offer something into the conversation that's more in keeping with his recovery program."

The result, he adds, is a moment that operates on multiple levels at once.

"It's an affirmation of something [Langdon] wants to keep in the forefront of his mind as he faces triggers throughout his first day back," Wyle said. "So it fit hand in glove with where the character was in the moment. It offers a little poetic insight and wisdom into fatherhood, binds these three guys together — who probably haven't read John O'Donohue, but might — and exposes O'Donohue to a world population that probably has never heard of him."

Episode 3 also introduces Yana (Irina Dubova), a patient whose medical case is inseparable from her past: She is a survivor of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, a tragedy that profoundly impacted the city of Pittsburgh. In one of the hour's most heartwarming scenes, Yana takes a moment to thank her nurse, Perlah (Amielynn Abellera), noting that it was the local mosque that showed up for victims and families in the aftermath, offering support when it was needed most.

For Wyle, the scene grew out of a desire to more fully engage with Robby's Jewish identity in Season 2.

"We initiated it in Season 1, and it seemed appropriate to touch on it — either in terms of his upbringing, or in terms of his present faith, or lack thereof," Wyle explained. He also acknowledged that, despite its significance to the city, the Tree of Life shooting had not been addressed on screen during the show's first season.

"That was a very significant event in the city of Pittsburgh," he said. "So those two things provided an opportunity."

At the same time, Wyle was intentional about what Yana would bring to the table beyond her history.

"I wanted to bring in a character who was going through some PTSD symptoms," he noted, "but who would also introduce the notion that while there isn't a clock on healing, there is a clock on life."

That idea — that postponing healing comes at a cost — becomes quietly destabilizing for Robby.

"When she puts that on the table," Wyle said, "it's the first minor tremor in a series of earthquakes that are going to rock Robby's resolve as the show goes forward."

But the storyline's emotional culmination lies in what Wyle discovered while researching the real-world response to the Tree of Life tragedy.

"The thing I found most interesting was the under-reported aspect of the Muslim community coming out in solidarity with the Jewish community," he explained. "Raising money for the funerals, raising money for the hospital bills of the victims.... that solidarity — that sense of community, that sense of possibility — I found extremely encouraging and worthy of mentioning. As a way of saying: This is not unprecedented. It's not only [precedented] — it's possible."