The Chicago Med Season 11 finale, titled “Heaven Help Us,” follows from the penultimate episode, which, oh yes, had Gafney going into a lockdown due to an escaped prisoner. Probably on par for the course when the setup for the finale is the ED getting an influx of patients from a nearby prison after a riot.
But that’s not all! We also get Archer trying to tell Hannah that he’s in love with her for basically an entire episode, only to fail. Then, Hannah ends up in a delivery room with a patient who’s about to give birth. Except, she’s in labor too. Plus, the hospital is in lockdown. The perfect cocktail of Chicago Med drama for us to head into the finale. Plus, the promo promises Archer will be in danger, Hannah will give birth at last, and will the two get their happily ever after? Or at least their happy beginning?
We can’t give you the answer to that yet, but we can tell you that Jessy Schram was delighted to hear us compare Hannah’s pregnancy and how long it’s lasted to that of her character of Cinderella in Once Upon a Time. Though technically, that was worse. Back then, Cinderella was pregnant for all 28 years of the curse. Talk about a long pregnancy.
“People love to get my characters pregnant and then keep us in a curse for years and years and years,” Schram laughed. “Some people asked me if Hannah was even going to give birth this season, and I was like: “OK, calm down. Obviously, it’s going to happen. It has to. It hasn’t been that long.”
It’s felt like a long time, though. “Yeah, it definitely felt like the normal period of which a real person in real life would be giving birth,” she laughed. And then, though we will not transcribe it, she proceeded to explain the entire plot of Once Upon a Time to Chicago Med Showrunner Allen MacDonald, complete with “she was under a curse for 28 years until Jennifer Morrison’s character came to town, and then the curse was lifted. Yeah, and she gave birth at last. And Rumpelstiltskin wanted to steal it. It was a whole thing.”
Truly, it was!
“I’m so glad you got through that,” MacDonald quipped.
But Hannah is giving birth in this episode, spoiler alert. The trailer already gave us a glimpse of that. How that will go, well… let’s just say that MacDonald approaches finales very differently than any other episode. There’s an awareness that he’s gotta land it.
“I feel like I have to land it and that it’s the last episode of the season and that it’s the culmination of everything that we’ve built. So, it does feel like a lot of pressure. And then I have to kind of compartmentalize it in my brain.”
A lot of things need to happen, after all! “The first element was this two-part prison riot storyline that I was completing. And so, I had to balance that with some major scenes that we knew were going to happen all season long.” He told us which ones, but you’ll have to wait until after the episode to find out what the endgame was. Though here’s a tease about what MacDonald called a two-part finale.
“The way that I kind of balanced it is I started strong with the prison story and then I kind of gradually moved into all the personal stuff at the end.”
Personal stuff, you say? Personal stuff indeed. For Frost and his father (and Naomi!). Lenox and Ripley. Dr. Charles and Dr. Rabari. Of course, Hannah and Dean. And hey, even Sharon Goodwin. Here’s to answers, and a great setup for Season 12.
Are you excited for Chicago Med Season 11, Episode 21 ‘Heaven Help Us’? Share with us in the comments below!
The Chicago Med Season 11 finale airs Wednesday, May 12, on NBC.
