‘Chicago Med’: [Spoiler] Thanks Fans After Surprise Season 8 Premiere Exit
[Warning: This article contains spoilers for the Chicago Med Season 8 premiere.]
Chicago Med fans have seen the last of Dr. Dylan Scott, at least for now. The season 8 premiere was the last for actor Guy Lockard, who plays the cop-turned-doc on the NBC medical drama.
‘Chicago Med’ says goodbye to Dr. Dylan Scott in the season 8 premiere
Chicago Med’s jam-packed season 8 premiere featured not one but two cast exits.
One was Lockard, who joined the show in season 7. His Dylan Scott character is a former cop who switched gears to become a physician. But he found it hard to shake his past as a police officer. Last season, he got involved with undercover cop Jo (Riley Voelkel). Her death in the season 8 opener left Dylan devastated and ultimately led him to leave Gaffney Chicago Medical Center for good.
In addition to Lockard’s departure, the season 8 premiere also confirmed Sarah Rafferty’s exit as Dr. Pamela Black. Her character had major surgery at the end of season 7, and she’s unable to return to work as a result. She made a brief appearance in “How Do You Begin to Count the Losses” but won’t appear in future episodes.
Guy Lockard says Dylan ‘changed my life’
Lockard took to social media to comment on his character’s exit shortly after his final Chicago Med episode aired.
“Thank you. Each & every one of you,” he tweeted. “And thank you, Dylan. You changed my life. See y’all soon.”
Lockard also gave a special shout-out to Marlyne Barrett, who plays nurse Maggie Campbell on the show. “It’s been an absolute pleasure working with you, sis. I love you,” he tweeted.
The door is open for Lockard to return to the NBC drama
Lockard’s time on Chicago Med is over. But that doesn’t mean that fans have necessarily seen the last of his Dr. Scott. The show has a habit of bringing back old characters after they’ve spent some time away. Case in point: YaYa DaCosta’s Dr. April Sexton made a surprise return at the end of the premiere. DaCosta left the show at the end of season 6 to star in the now-canceled series Our Kind of People on Fox. The Chicago Med team isn’t ruling out a similar return for Lockard somewhere down the line.
“We came to the end of his story,” executive producer Diane Frolov told Deadline. “We felt that we had told his story … This was a story about a doctor who continually had conflict with his history as a cop. And now the death of his girlfriend leaves him really shaken up and it put him on a new path, a different path. But as you’ve seen with April and some of our other characters, just because people go doesn’t mean they stay away.”
New episodes of Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
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