Why Did Dominic Rains Leave Chicago Med? The One Chicago Show’s Boss Says…
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Another One Chicago star bites the dust. Dominic Rains left Chicago Med after five seasons, and he’s not the only one who exited the One Chicago show ahead of Season 10.
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Rains joined Chicago Med as Dr. Crockett Marcel, a trauma surgeon at Gaffney Chicago Medical Center’s Emergency Department, in Season 5. After five seasons on the series, news broke in June 2024 that Rains was leaving the One Chicago show, with Season 9 being his last season as a series regular.
More: The most shocking Chicago Med exits over the years
News of Rain’s exit from Chicago Med also came after co-showrunners, Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, also announced that they were departing after nine years on the series. “We were honored to be chosen by Dick Wolf to run Chicago Med and have tremendously enjoyed our association with Wolf Entertainment and Universal Television,” the two said in a statement in April 2024. “We love Chicago Med and have devoted all our creative energies to it, but after nine seasons we feel it’s time for us to move on and explore other possibilities. We’ve been privileged to work with a great writing staff, production team and a brilliant cast of actors. We will miss them all.”
Why did Dominic Rains leave Chicago Med?
At the time of writing, Rains hasn’t revealed why he decided to leave Chicago Med. (He deleted his Instagram prior to the news of his Chicago Med exit.) However, it’s assumed that he chose to exit for the same reason other long-running One Chicago cast members — such as Chicago Fire‘s Kara Killmer (Sylvie Brett) and Eamonn Walker (Chief Wallace Boden) and Chicago P.D.‘s Tracy Spiridakos (Hailey Upton) — announced their departures in the past year.
More: Where former Chicago Med cast members are now
Chicago Fire showrunner Andrea Newman told TVLine in January 2024 that it’s natural for actors who have been on TV for as long as Rains, Killmer, Walker, and Spiridakos to leave shows after a certain amount of time to pursue other career opportunities. The exits also allow the shows to make way for new storylines. “Honestly, longevity is really just part of it,” Newman said. “[In] storytelling and in terms of real life, 12 years is a long time and things need to change, just dynamic-wise. You want new characters and you want new dynamics.”
More: Meet the Chicago Med cast’s children in real life
She continued, “Actor-wise, 12 years is a long [time]. Nobody expects in TV [that] they’re going to be anywhere for 12 years, I can say that for sure, from all sides.” Former Chicago Med co-showrunner Andrew Schneider also told TVLine about the pro of longtime cast members leaving. “That’s really what the Wolf [Entertainment] company likes to do is have characters leave and bring in new characters in an effort to keep the shows fresh or find new dimensions to the show and new dynamics,” Schneider said.
Spiridakos — who left Chicago P.D. in the Season 11 finale, “More,” in May 2024 — also confirmed to Variety at the time of the episode that she chose the exit the series to explore other career opportunities. “I decided at the end of my sixth season, which is when I had reached out to Gwen and to everyone at Wolf to let them know that I just wanted to do one more year. I wanted us to send out the character with one last season,” Spiridakos said. “It was a hard decision — very, very hard. I love everybody on the show — cast, crew, producers, writers, everybody. It’s such an incredible team. I was just curious what was out there for me and wanted to switch it up, and that was it.”
Though Marcel doesn’t appear in Chicago Med Season 10, MacDonald confirmed that there’s a place for him should Rains want to return.
“[The One Chicago Universe] is this big world of three shows and people come in and out of it. Specifically to Chicago Med, people come in and out of it because it is a world inhabited by characters and there are some from the past that have gone and we have new ones,” she said. “There are no solid plans at the moment for this, but I’m very interested in bringing back characters from the past and seeing how they react to the characters they knew in the past, and with the new characters that we’ve added because I would love to see that and I think the audience would too.”
How does Dr. Crockett Marcel leave Chicago Med?
Chicago Med set up Marcel’s exit from the series in the Season 9 finale, “I Think I Know You, but Do I Really?” which saw the Chicago Med’s Chief of Patient and Medical Services, Sharon Goodwin, give Marcel her blessing for him to take a break from the ED following the death of one of his patients, Colin, and his father. Colin died after Marcel canceled his planned liver transplant due to an infection despite the father’s pleas that not going forward with the surgery would kill his son. After Colin’s death, his father committed suicide. The finale saw Marcel shaken by the news, which reminded him of when he lost his own baby daughter, Harper, from Leukemia soon after her first birthday.
Chicago Med showrunner Allen MacDonald confirmed to One Chicago Center in September 2024 that the ending plays a part in how Marcel was written out of the series. “The reason I decided to do that was just simply I felt that Dr. Crockett Marcel had already been written out at the end of last season,” MacDonald said of the decision to write out Marcel off-screen. “It was left in a way that he could come back or if he left it, it was understandable that he had some issues of his own that he needed to work out in terms of his grieving process for the loss of his daughter. I didn’t really feel there was a need to bring him back to write him out because I felt that had been done.”
Chicago Med is available to stream on Peacock.
Watch ‘Chicago Med’ on Peacock
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