The Pitt Episode 14 Reveals The Shooter's Identity (And Everyone Was Wrong)

This article contains discussions of mass violence, suicide, and mental health.

Stop reading right now if you haven't watched "The Pitt" Episode 14, "8:00 P.M." — spoilers lie ahead.

In the 11th episode of the hit Max original "The Pitt," the doctors at a crowded Pittsburgh emergency room (including Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch, played by "ER" veteran Noah Wyle) get word that there's an active shooter at a local festival called PittFest, and immediately, they all brace for impact. Waves of grievously injured patients then flood the ER, some of whom don't even make it to the hospital alive. Before long, the doctors find themselves in a situation where they're so low on supplies and blood that they have to find some seriously unconventional solutions to the problem (like, for example, acting as human blood bags and giving blood directly to patients as they treat them).

By episode 14, which "takes place" at 8 P.M., we learn that the shooter has been neutralized. Here's the thing, though. It's not the teenager in custody, David Saunders (Jackson Kelly), whose mother found a disturbing list of women he planned to potentially harm, nor is it the disgruntled patient Doug Driscoll (Drew Powell), who waited to so long for medical attention in the ER that he slugged charge nurse Dana (Katherine LaNasa). We were all wrong, and it was really some random guy. When someone in the ER asks who the shooter — who's found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound — was in the first place, Dana, still bearing a black eye courtesy of Doug, interjects, "Does it matter?"

According to TVLine's interview with Wyle, no; it doesn't matter at all. "That has absolutely nothing to do with the horrific nature of the work that these [doctors and nurses] have to perform in the aftermath of this, so why give it any attention?" Wyle asked (and he was right, honestly). "It's certainly not going to make any difference at this point in any of the people's lives who are in our environment."

Still, as Noah Wyle told TVLine's Ryan Schwartz, the show meant to misdirect its audience. It wanted them to assume the shooter was either David — who goes missing from the show after its first episode and is eventually detained by the police in the episode "7:00 P.M." — or Doug, based on the fact that they both seem to have violent tendencies. (They also both harbor hatred of some kind, whether it's David and his derogatory views of women or the pretty racist remarks Doug makes while waiting to be seen in the ER.)

"That said, we did enjoy the misdirection of having a lot of people think it was David or Doug Driscoll or ... you know, I even read some wilder theories on that," Wyle admitted to Schwartz before explaining that the bait-and-switch was all about David:

"But that was to underscore the storyline that we really wanted to explore with David's character, which is about misunderstanding at every level. Trying to connect, but missing crucial moments when that connection really needs to be in place. Otherwise, it can trigger suspicion, paranoia, panic, over-involvement, lapse in judgment — all sorts of things happen in the wake of our bias, our misinterpretation and our misunderstanding of David's behavior."

At the beginning of "The Pitt," David's mother Theresa Saunders (Joanna Going) drinks ipecac to make herself sick so that David brings her into the ER — because after finding a list of girls he apparently wants to hurt, she can't figure out any other way to get him near some professionals and first responders. What ends up happening is that the cops cuff David and the ER staff stick him in an exam room, though Dr. Robby and his colleague Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) radically disagree on this. (Robby thinks it's too harsh of an approach, whereas McKay feels he's an immediate danger who needs to be neutralized.) It's then revealed that Theresa signed a petition to institutionalize him based on the list she found.

"Were we wrong to intervene? Maybe not," Wyle continued. "But we were wrong, in this particular case, to assume that it was 1-to-1. I think that's another important lesson to take from this — that while thought crimes are not crimes, they can be cries for help, or needs for attention or analysis, and I think that was an important message to get across."

Just because mass shooting victims aren't flooding Dr. Robby's ER anymore by the end of "8:00 P.M.," that doesn't mean that anyone's out of the woods just yet. Far from it, actually, because as everyone in the ER takes a breath, a young girl and her brother arrive in need of immediate medical attention. The boy, Flynn (Ivan Fraser), can't breathe and is presenting with a rash all over his lower body, at which point his sister Georgia (Kayla Anjali) tells the doctors that she had similar symptoms recently. Dr. Robby, who's quite a bit older than the medical students and residents working in the ER, immediately clocks what's going on. Flynn has measles, so when his parents show up — they were at a movie while their son fell ill — they tell Robby that not only did they not vaccinate Flynn, but they're hesitant to give him any medical attention, like a necessary spinal tap, now that he's in the ER.

Robby correctly assess the situation and says that, due to Flynn's condition, the ER may have a measles outbreak on their hands. By this point on season 1 of "The Pitt," it's an understatement to say Robby is at a breaking point; his surrogate son's girlfriend died in the shooting despite Robby's desperate attempts to save her, so the idea that Flynn's situation could have been prevented and can be treated now is too much for him to handle. There's only one episode left of the first season of "The Pitt," so perhaps we'll see how the new measles emergency resolves when it airs on April 10, 2025, at 9 P.M. EST. Hopefully, we won't have to wait until season 2 to find out.

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