Spoilers follow.

With its second season, “The Pitt” has thus far maintained its standing as the best medical drama in years. But it isn’t half hard to watch sometimes. Back in season 1, we were introduced to Ernest Harden Jr.’s Louie Cloverfield, an alcoholic who wound up in the ER at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center twice in one day (“The Pitt” takes place over a single, 15-hour shift). Thankfully, Noah Wyle’s Dr. Michael Robinavitch and his staff were able to stabilize Louie, but in season 2 he returns and this time things ended in tragedy. In fact, Louie’s demise was even more tragic than we might have expected, with details about his past as a family man making the whole sad affair almost too much to bear.

At the end of episode 5, Patrick Ball’s Dr. Frank Langdon walked into Louie’s treatment room after he heard his heart rate monitor flatlining. Suspecting Louie simply removed his pulse oximeter, Langdon initially didn’t expect anything to be wrong. Almost immediately, however, it became clear that the “frequent flyer” patient was actually flatlining and suddenly it was all hands on deck.

It was a heck of a cliffhanger to end episode 5, and with “The Pitt” having gone somewhat easy on us thus far (at least compared to season 1 which was unbearably tragic from the outset) many of us surely expected the worst when episode 6 rolled around. Those suspicions were confirmed when the episode finally arrived and the staff at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center failed to revive Louie, who became the first major loss this season. Making things even more tragic was the fact that we finally found out more details about the alcoholic’s past, and none of it made Louie’s passing any easier to take.

“The Pitt” won big at the Emmys last year, earned widespread praise for its medical accuracy, and became a major hit for HBO Max in 2025. It also traumatized us all by proxy. Thus far, “The Pitt” season 2 has continued to turn empathy and competency into great TV but hasn’t been quite as harrowing as the first season. After just four installments of season 1, we’d seen the death of a teen and his parents’ anguish at their loss as well as the passing of an elderly father with his children by his bedside. Now, with the death of Louie Cloverfield, season 2 has finally hit us with something akin to those heart-rending moments.

Losing Louie was hard to watch not only because he’s been a mainstay at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, but because he was one of the more jovial patients. What’s more, the way in which he died was upsetting, with “The Pitt” refusing to go easy on us just because it was Louie on the crash cart.

In episode 6, Dr. Michael Robinavitch and the team attempt to bring Louie back after his heart stops beating. Dr. Robby desperately applies compressions to no avail and shocks fail to start Louie’s heart, but things get truly distressing when Louie’s intubation tube starts spouting blood. After several minutes, the doctors call it and Louie officially dies from pulmonary hemorrhage from liver failure. Soon after, Dr. Frank Langdon reveals to Gerran Howell’s Dr. Dennis Whitaker that he found a photo in Louie’s pocket showing him as a younger man with a seemingly pregnant wife. This begins a series of scenes that act as a tribute to the late patient, ultimately humanizing him.

In season 1 of “The Pitt” Louie Cloverfield was both a sobering reminder of the effects of alcohol dependency and a sort of comic relief figure, who remained upbeat despite his multiple trips to the ER. With season 2, it’s as if the writers wanted to do away with any notion of alcoholism being funny, not only killing off Louie but humanizing him in a way that recontextualizes all his prior scenes.

After Louie’s death, Katherine LaNasa’s Dana Evans teaches new recruit Emma Nolan (Laëtitia Hollard) how to clean his body and while you’d expect that to be a fairly grim affair there’s something quite tender about the process (“The Pitt” featured a similarly touching moment during a callback in episode 2). Louie is then moved to a viewing room where the staff gather to pay their respects. At this point, everybody remains confused about the woman in the photo found by Dr. Frank Langdon, but Dr. Michael Robinavitch soon clears things up.

“That’s Rhonda, Louie’s wife,” says the attending physician as he scans the photo. Robby then reveals the pair were high school sweethearts and that Rhonda eventually fell pregnant only for she and the baby to die in a car crash one month before the due date. This was the heart-breaking catalyst for Louie’s alcoholism, putting all his visits to the Pitt in perspective and wrapping up his story with one of the most tragic revelations featured on the show thus far. That said, in humanizing Louie and depicting his alcoholism as the product of severe emotional trauma, the “Pitt” writers ensured that he went out as a real human being rather than as the ER comic relief.