This article contains affiliate links; if you click such a link and make a purchase, we may earn a commission.'The Pitt' Season 2 Finale’s End-Credits Scene Surprised Taylor Dearden, Too

Emma FraserFri, April 17, 2026 at 11:44 AM UTC

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Taylor Dearden Ends The Pitt S2 on a HighHBO

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To shake off an emotionally and physically draining 15-hour Fourth of July shift, sometimes watching the fireworks won’t cut it. For actress Taylor Dearden’s character, Dr. Mel King, the second season of the HBO Max medical drama The Pitt closes out with an unexpected new friendship and an activity renowned for its therapeutic powers: karaoke. Singing Alanis Morissette’s anthemic “You Oughta Know” alongside Dr. Trinity Santos (Isa Briones) as the credits roll—particularly after such an emotional final scene featuring Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) and Baby Jane Doe—was not on anyone’s bingo card, including Dearden’s.

“We had no idea what was going on at all,” Dearden tells ELLE. “Isa looked at me [one day] and said ‘Did you have a fitting?’ I went, ‘How would I have a fitting? We wear the same thing every day.’ She was like, ‘No, for the karaoke.’ And I said, ‘The what?’”

Suffice it to say, Dearden was not anticipating having to sing alongside a co-star who happens to be a Broadway musical sensation. “Yeah, no big deal,” Dearden says, laughing. “‘You’re fine, Taylor. It’s just gonna be you and one of the best voices of our generation. That's fine.’”

So how did Mel and Santos end up at a bar after a shift that saw ICE agents causing havoc in the emergency department; a cyberattack forcing the team to go analog for five hours; and a substantial increase in patients (after two other hospitals shuttered their doors to emergencies)? Throughout season 2, both Mel and Santos juggled the aforementioned challenges with their own crises, and while they might seem an odd pair on paper, the two doctors’ shared desire to blow off steam after a terrible day at work leads to a musical performance that had me beaming from ear to ear.

Taylor Dearden in The Pitt season 2 finale’s end-credits scene.HBO

In the lead-up to the finale, Mel spent much of the Fourth of July shift—and thus much of season 2—uncharacteristically on edge, thanks to a deposition in a medical malpractice suit scheduled that afternoon. The legal action is tied to a case from the first season, when Mel performed a spinal tap on a boy with measles after his mother forbade it. (His father gave the go-ahead.) Now, the anti-vaxxer mother claims the boy has “intellectual decline” from the spinal tap, though Mel knows it’s actually due to low oxygen from measles pneumonia. Because one episode of The Pitt equates to one hour of a shift, starting at 7 A.M., Mel spends half of season 2 in an anxious state. It doesn’t matter that everyone from Robby to the hospital lawyer tells Mel it will be fine.

Much to Dearden’s disappointment, the deposition occurred off-screen in episodes 9 and 10, and thus we only get to see how dejected Mel is after the lawyers have gone hard on her. To make matters worse, Mel learns in the finale that she has to go through the deposition process all again because of her performance. When Dearden heard Mel would have to do another deposition, she had one question. “I went up to Noah and [creator R.] Scott [Gemmill] and went, ‘So we’re seeing it next season, right?!’”

Given the tumultuous shift, it’s unsurprising when the finale finds Mel telling Santos she could use a fun night out. As Santos puts it to the doctor, “What I do is more like primal scream therapy. There’s nothing like getting wasted and just absolutely wailing to shake off a shitshow like today.”

In reality, Dearden and Briones sank their teeth into Morissette’s earth-scorching lyrics not as the day was wrapping but when the sun had only just come up. “For the vast majority of us, it was the last day [shooting],” Dearden says. “We shot this in the morning before anyone else got there, and it was so fun. We were also so exhausted from shooting at that point; we were like zombies, which works.” The Pitt rarely leaves the emergency department or the Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center vicinity, so when Mel agrees to go out with Santos, there is zero expectation from audiences that we’ll get to see their antics unfold—which makes it even more special that we do.

Ahead of the season 2 premiere, the cast took part in a BuzzFeed quiz, which included a question about their go-to karaoke track. Dearden confirms she had no idea what was coming up in the finale when she mentioned not being comfortable singing in public. “I actually love singing, but I hate people hearing me,” she says. The end-credits scene was a leap of faith for Dearden, who thanks Briones for helping her get into the right headspace character-wise: “We read it, we were like, ‘This is bizarre, but let’s do it.’” She concludes, “There’s no hesitation. We just went for it.”

Dearden and Isa Briones in The Pitt season 2 finale’s end-credits scene.HBO

Whereas the majority of the day-shift cast watches the fireworks on the hospital roof, in a scene that was shot in Pittsburgh in September 2025 (long before the season finale script was even written), the karaoke sequence was filmed in January 2026, on the same Warner Bros. lot as the main Pitt soundstage. “It felt like a secret passage, or a speakeasy, because we went through this black tarp, and then there are background actors there, and it's a full-on tiki bar,” Dearden says. “We’re [Briones] both like, ‘When did you guys make this?’” When inside, the pair needed just two takes to nail their best cathartic Morissette moment, and Mel gets just as into the song (and head-banging) as Santos. “It’s such a great energy boost for the start of a day,” Dearden adds. “I think we had more energy than the rest of [the cast] because, by the end, we’re all zonked.”

When Dearden jumped on the phone with ELLE in early April, she had only just gotten back from vacation and explained that she’s “not on the internet very much.” That’s how I ended up breaking the news to her that her father, fellow actor Bryan Cranston, had told a story on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about her rushing to the aid of someone choking in a restaurant during the holidays. This brief moment of real-life medical intervention is not thanks to her training on The Pitt; instead, it dates back to eighth grade, when Dearden was certified in first aid and CPR. Having grown up with a parent who starred on hit shows like Malcolm in the Middle and Breaking Bad (in which Dearden appeared), the 33-year-old Dearden takes it in stride that her father shared this story on national television. Not to mention that Cranston has been enjoying playing the proud father whenever Dearden’s role on The Pitt comes up during interviews. (On The Late Show, he joked that they finally have a doctor in the family.)

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As it happens, Mel is one of only a few characters whose family member appears in the series: When her twin sister, Becca (Tal Anderson), arrives at PTMC in episode 7 with a stomachache, it further unmoors her. After the death of their parents sometime prior to the series premiere, Mel became Becca’s caregiver. Now, Becca (who is autistic and has additional support needs) resides in an independent living center. Mel still spends all of her free time with her sibling, and it blindsides her when Becca tells Mel she has been diagnosed with a UTI and that she has been having sex. “As Americans, we’re so used to being shy about [sex] and whispering about it,” Dearden says. “The truth is, Becca has no issue talking about it, and Mel's a doctor, so she should have no issue talking about it.”

Mel quickly spirals, but Dearden notes her character’s reaction has less to do with Becca’s sexual activity than with the implications of Becca’s secrecy. “[Mel’s] been behaving as [part of] a unit [with her sister] for so long that it’s become natural and normal,” Dearden says. “The idea that part of the unit branched off and also didn’t tell her for six months—that’s a long time to have a secret boyfriend. It just hurt.”

Exploring Becca’s independence and sexual autonomy also continues The Pitt’s ongoing depiction of neurodivergent communities with care and nuance, refusing to lean into stereotypes or tropes that TV shows often fall into. “The whole idea with The Pitt, they do a lot of showing; showing what [something] is, showing how to do it wrong, and showing how to do it right,” Dearden says. “I think with neurodivergence, they wanted to show it [as it is].” Treating Becca’s autism with precision—but not turning it into some insurmountable obstacle—makes the storyline “so much more powerful and universal, and it feels approachable.”

Collaboration between the actors and writers is crucial to achieve this. Dearden recalls a time when Anderson felt nervous about approaching the creatives with a note about Becca’s storyline. “She [Anderson] went and said, ‘Hey, I wouldn’t do this within the script, but I would do this,’” Dearden says. “They were like, ‘Oh my god, yes. Tell us any time.’ And it was changed, and she got to do exactly what felt right for her.” This has not always been Dearden’s experience on TV sets, but on The Pitt, there is an open dialogue that allows for this kind of exchange.

Taylor Dearden and Patrick Ball in The Pitt season 2.HBO

Similarly, a pivotal scene in the ambulance bay between Mel and Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball) in the finale was rewritten after Dearden pitched an idea to Gemmill (who also wrote this episode). “I asked if it would be okay to write it so that they are peers, that he’s not giving her advice, that it’s not a mentor-mentee thing anymore, that it’s a shifted relationship,” she says. “There’s so much more weight in that they are more equals because then it’s not just, ‘Hey, I have to teach you.’ Then it’s an absolute choice to be friends.” The moment of shared reflection comes after a day in which Langdon has been a support to Mel, and Mel was there for Langdon during his crisis of confidence a couple of hours earlier, in episode 13.

“Scott was amazing and helped us,” Dearden says. “He rewrote a lot of it for us…It felt right that no one really has advice for each other. They’re just talking for the first time as friends without there being a problem needing to be solved. It’s a real friendship at that point, which I thought was quite profound.”

As with many pairings on The Pitt, some viewers would understandably love to see Mel and Langdon cross the line into romance, which is a testament to the actors’ chemistry. Dearden says she understands this fan reaction, but that’s not how she nor Ball see the bond between the doctors. (“Patrick and I have always agreed and felt the same,” she says.) “It’s the exciting trope that we’ve all seen of the nerdy-girl-with-the-hot-jock type vibe,” Dearden says. “But for me—maybe it’s because I am neurodivergent—it’s much more powerful to show friendship.” Part of Dearden’s reaction to this pairing staying platonic is that it emphasizes the longevity of their relationship. Crushes and romances come and go, she explains. “But the hope, at least with friends, is that that’s a forever thing, and so it’s not a fleeting thing between them,” she says. “They’re building a solid foundation for lifelong friendship.”

While Dearden is happy with the direction of Mel’s relationship with Langdon, she did have another hope for her character this season that was ultimately fulfilled in the finale. “The thing that I had wished for in the hiatus and while shooting—hoping and hoping—that I wanted more than anything, was for Mel to have a friend that’s separate from Langdon,” Dearden says, “because she and Langdon have a past of this mentor-mentee [relationship], and towards the end [of season 2] they’re starting to morph into peers and friends.” She continues, “I wanted someone to take a chance on [Mel] and just be like, ‘Let’s hang out. Let’s just try this.’ I didn’t expect it to be Santos, but I’m so unbelievably delighted it was. We’re like perfect opposites.”

The friendship also isn’t out of the blue, as Santos clocked that Mel was out of sorts as early as the season 2 premiere. (She also gives Mel a snarky nickname: “Melfeasance.”) I mention to Dearden that, when I spoke to Briones earlier this year, she noted that Santos struggles to trust people. Dearden reflects that Mel’s genuine sweetness comes across as a threat to someone as guarded as Santos. “It disarms Santos, because no one is more ready to listen to everyone else, or excited to talk to you; Mel’s a perfect supporter of everyone,” Dearden says. “It takes time for someone who’s had to keep their guard up to kind of realize this person actually is this unicorn, as opposed to something more sinister.”

Dearden in The Pitt season 2.HBO

The last few hours of the Fourth of July shift see Santos and Mel spending time together as they digitize charts and shred the paper copies from when they had to revert to analog systems. The task leads to one of their more lighthearted scenes, offering a rare chance for the actors to improvise (such as Dearden’s “beep beep”), which resulted in Briones, Dearden, and Gerran Howell (who plays Dr. Whitaker) breaking character, a moment that made the final cut in episode 13. “We were trying to crack each other up at that point,” Dearden says. “We had no idea they were going to use it. I’m so delighted they did because that was such a silly day.” While the cast will return to shoot the third season of The Pitt in June, Dearden is planning a trip from L.A. to New York, where she intends to see Briones on stage (as well as her other co-stars Ball and Sepideh Moafi, who are also currently performing on Broadway).

When I asked Dearden if she knows anything about what is in store for the next season, she turned it back on me: “Not a thing. If you know anything, can you please tell me?” For now, Dearden will settle on Mel being happier in season 3. “Yes, yes, please!” is her emphatic response when I mentioned I’d like to see a return to a Mel without so much anxiety. Dearden got her wish that Mel would gain a new friend this year, and perhaps this trend will continue when the hit series returns. That would be something to sing about.

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