Chicago Med Star Reveals The Fan Favorite Who Wasn’t Meant To Survive
Chicago Med almost pulled the plug on another fan favorite. Steven Weber says the drama originally planned to kill off a major character who ultimately survived—and breaks down the last-minute pivot in a candid new interview.
Chicago Med has offed plenty of big characters over the years, and apparently Dr. Dean Archer was almost one of them. Steven Weber (yep, the Wings guy) says the show originally planned to bring Archer in, make things very dark, and then drop the hammer just a few episodes later. Instead, he stuck around and became a core part of the series. Not exactly the path you expect for a character who arrived with a storm cloud over his head.
The original plan was bleak
On the latest episode of the One Chicago Podcast, Weber laid out how short Archer’s life on the show was meant to be: he was supposed to die four or five episodes after he showed up in Season 6. The character was introduced as a former Naval surgeon who served in Afghanistan, got wounded, and came home with untreated PTSD. The arc, as conceived, was going to culminate in Archer harming himself. Weber even says they played him like someone skirting sociopathic behavior — that was the point, and that path was going to end badly.
"Halfway through [the initial arc], I think they decided that this character had more depth and appeal and possibilities beyond where they were gonna take him."
So what changed? According to Weber, the writers saw more to mine. Midway through that initial run, they pivoted, kept him alive, and started building out the character instead of cutting him off. He survived Season 6, returned the next year for multiple episodes, and from there, it just kept expanding.
- Plan A: Kill Archer off in Season 6, about 4–5 episodes after his debut.
- The pitch: ex-Naval surgeon, Afghanistan vet, wounded, PTSD, spiraling toward self-harm; his behavior veered into sociopathic territory.
- Mid-course correction: Writers decided he had more range than expected and shelved the death.
- Aftermath: He came back the following season for a batch of episodes and gradually became a fixture.
Weber, 64, doesn’t sugarcoat how dark that initial plan was, which makes Archer’s evolution into a key player on this long-running medical drama even more surprising. In TV terms, that’s a pretty wild save — a character built to burn out who ended up sticking the landing.