Chicago Med Season 10 Finale: Who Is the Father of Asher's Baby?

[This story contains spoilers for the Season 10 finale of Chicago Med; read at your own risk.]

Chicago Med's Season 10 finale, titled "…Don't You Cry," ended the season with more questions than answers, even if the medical conflict between a billionaire who got his daughter bumped up on the transplant list and the parents of the boy who was originally set to receive a transplant resulted in the kind of final confrontation that almost turned deadly. Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram)'s issues surrounding her surprise pregnancy continued, Dr. Charles (Oliver Platt) worried about his parenting skills after his daughter's suicide attempt, and Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) made a difficult decision, both for the hospital and for herself.

The episode ended with what will likely be a big storyline heading into Season 11 — Asher's decision to rely on Dr. Archer (Steven Weber), instead of the man everyone assumed was the father of her baby, her ex-boyfriend Mitch Ripley (Luke Mitchell). Does that mean there's a possibility the baby isn't Ripley's? Is the love triangle on, or is Asher just relying on Archer as a friend?

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While all of this romantic drama was unfolding, Dr. Charles — often the show's moral center — was forced to rely on someone surprising as he started to question whether he's failed both as a shrink and as a father. But what did the return of Dr. Sarah Reese (Rachel DiPillo) for the second time this season mean for the show? Will she be back in a more regular capacity in the upcoming season? And is there even a place for her in the new dynamics the show has established?

Below, Chicago Med showrunner Allen MacDonald breaks down whether the show is setting up a love triangle, that surprising Dr. Reese return and how it came to be, and whether Season 11 will bring even more familiar faces to Gaffney Chicago Medical Center.

The episode didn't confirm who the father of Hannah Asher's baby is, but it did play with our expectations about who it is. Can you walk us through what she's thinking and why the episode ended without her telling the father of the baby the news?

Allen MacDonald: I think that she's working it out. Obviously, she knows who the father is. And like, where we go when we have that sequence at the end, there's a little bit of a mystery there for the audience. And I don't want to say much more than that. You will find out.

But when she went to Archer at the end, was she going to him as a love interest or as a friend? How do you see him? Because this is now going to be the whole conversation for the entire hiatus.

MacDonald: Every time we go one direction or another, there's a whole group online on X [formerly Twitter] that becomes completely incensed. And sometimes they name-check me, and they become incensed with me. But what you learn very quickly, and I actually learned this on other shows, is that you're never going to please everybody.And what we have to do is figure out what the most organic path for all the characters is.

To answer your question a little bit, I'll just say that when Hannah is in moments where she feels destabilized, I think that Archer is the most stabilizing force. And that's all I will say.

This episode gave us the return of Dr. Sarah Reese, once again. She's not part of Chicago Med regularly right now, but it does feel like when Dr. Charles goes to her, there's weight there because of their history. Was she always meant to come back, and is she someone we will maybe see pop up from time to time?

MacDonald: I just love, love, love that character. And I love their relationship. And to me, it was an unresolved issue for Charles in a season where he's kind of being forced to confront a lot of his history and baggage and deal with it in the same way that he helps other people deal with their baggage.

But he has himself sort of avoided it. And so, when Sarah came back for Episode 8, when she left, she had really earned his respect. And I think for the first time, he realized that she knows him and she held up a mirror to him and he didn't necessarily like everything he saw, but he felt seen by her and he felt she was an equal. And that was the whole point that one of the writers, Deanna Shumaker, brought up when she pitched bringing her [Dr. Reese] back. And because I love that character so much, I was like, yes, let's do that.

But the whole idea is like, how moving is that? That he was her mentor, and now he sees her as an equal. And when he is in a situation where he's in pain and he's confused and he doesn't know how to process what's going on in his life, the first call he would make, the first person he would think of is Sarah Reese. And to me, that's such an emotional reveal that that is probably my favorite moment in the finale. The act out when he's talking, and you don't know who he's talking to. And Anna Dokoza, the director, did such a fabulous job on that reveal.

It's like, was he talking to her? Then you cut to her and then back to him, and you're out for a commercial. The emotion of that is that he was in pain and she was the person he out of everybody he went to because he trusts her. I love Rachel DiPillo, and I love the character, Dr. Sarah Reese. And I absolutely want her back.

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Big picture, are plans for Season 11 set? Do you know how these storylines are going to be resolved? Anything specific you can tease?

MacDonald: I definitely have answers to some of the questions that we talked about, but I don't know the details yet, if that makes sense. I think I know what's going to happen, but what I find is I have very experienced writers, talented writers, and they have phenomenal ideas, that when I hear them, I'm like, 'Oh, that's better than what I was planning. So, let's do that.'

I can say that I want Sarah Reese to come back. I have teased some other people that I intend to bring back. I love bringing characters back from the past. St. Elsewhere was my favorite show when I was a teenager. And I would see sometimes the characters from two seasons ago were coming back, and I was so excited. I want the Chicago Med fans to experience that.

There's always the fear when you bring characters back from the past that it's kind of living in the past, but I don't view it that way. I think that Chicago Med and the stories we told in Season 10 are very much in the present, and we focus on all our series regulars. But in this huge One Chicago world, I think it's really fun to bring people back and check in on them.

The finale brought out a lot of emotion for a lot of people, including Dr. Charles and Sharon Goodwin. And there was a mental health tie-in for both, especially for Dr. Charles. Was the idea that, as a shrink, he's kind of been shrinking himself into not realizing his issues?

MacDonald: A hundred percent. That's exactly it, we have that discussion. And it was always our plan to bring Charles to this place, as you saw in the season finale, but it was not our intention in the beginning to have him go to Dr. Reed. That came up late in the game. It was a great idea. I think he, especially one of the big scenes in the finale, is between him and Anna, where she is kind of denying she was attempting suicide, and he tells the story of his dad.

And that's the thing, where he uses that story and her dad's pain to shine a light on Anna's pain, and she feels seen, and that opens up the communication, the connection between them again, that kind of had closed over the last couple of seasons off-camera. And I think moving forward, I can say that I'm hoping that we can have Anna back in the fall and explore that now, because they're at a new point in their relationship. And Charles is at a new point where he's opened himself up more to his own family, because I think in the past, he felt he needed to keep things in to protect them, even though he should know better than that as a shrink. But yeah, just because a doctor might be a great doctor for other people, that doesn't mean they practice what they preach.

Chicago Med will return with Season 11 in Fall 2025. All episodes are now streaming on Peacock.