Warning: MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD for the 200th episode of Chicago Med on NBC, called “A Game of Inches” and available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.
Longtime Chicago Med fans had plenty to celebrate early in the 2025 TV schedule, with a juicy payoff on the Season 10 finale cliffhanger and confirmation that Will Halstead himself would be back at Gaffney. He came back with Owen for a boys trip that was meant to bond them, but old habits die hard for Will, and he ended up on the case of a young man whose intestine was blocked by many, many, many baggies of cocaine.
Through a series of unfortunate events, Owen ended up being shot in the break room of the ED. While that’s of course awful news in-universe, the final moments of the episode as well as the promo for the next reveal that Torrey DeVitto is the second returning star as she reprises her role as Natalie Manning. Showrunner Allen MacDonald had previewed “OG characters coming back” in addition to Will, but I didn’t realize it’d be this soon!
For most of the episode, the majority of the Manstead updates were pretty great. While Will wasn’t sporting a wedding ring to suggest that they’d gotten married at any point since they reunited in the Season 8 finale, she’s 20 weeks pregnant. The sticky issue was that Owen hadn’t been Will’s biggest fan since the pregnancy news, and Will’s hope that they would bond at a Chicago Bears game fell through as soon as he got too invested in the case of the young man and cocaine baggies at Gaffney.
I think it’s a safe bet that he’ll regret that decision for much bigger reasons than just missing a football games, considering how the 200th episode ended! Nick Gehlfuss had previewed the “wonderful homage” moments in the episode, but he definitely didn’t spoil the biggest twists. When an armed woman broke into the ED’s OR to force the surgeons to hand over the bags of cocaine they’d just fished out of the victim’s abdomen, it seemed that she might get away without firing any shots, and Will had told Owen to hide behind the couch just in case.
Alas, that just wasn’t enough to avert tragedy in the world of One Chicago. The episode didn’t show the exact sequence of events that led to the gun going off, but Goodwin dropped the news of what had happened when she called Natalie: Owen had been shot. It wasn’t just a cameo, either, as she’ll be back in the Windy City, very pregnant and very worried about her firstborn. Take a look at the promo below:
The next episode is called “Horseshoes and Hand Grenades,” which… isn’t too helpful when it comes to trying to predict whether the Manstead family unit will get good or bad news. Interestingly, it looks like she’ll reunite with Dr. Charles before anybody else, with a quick shot in the preview showing him meeting her at the airport.
Find out what’s in store for poor Owen in the big episode with Nick Gehlfuss and Torrey DeVitto on Wednesday, October 15 at 8 p.m. ET. If you’re now in the mood to revisit the Manstead heyday of One Chicago’s medical drama, you can find every season so far streaming on Peacock.
