Watson got off to an eventful start in Season 2 in the 2025 TV schedule, with Sherlock Holmes even in the mix after the time jump. For Shinwell, he’s not contributing to the team as much via his criminal connections anymore, but is at work in the hospital as a nursing student. His skills will be put to the test in more ways than one in the new episode on November 3, and actor Ritchie Coster spoke with CinemaBlend about the storyline he originally didn’t love for his character, as well as needing “penance” for his actions.
Because this is Watson we’re talking about, the episode – called “Happy When It Rains” – will also have a wild medical case. Patients come into UHOP with wounds that seem to be infected with a flesh-eating bacterium, all while Shinwell is searching for meaning in his new direction as a nursing student. He’ll have to come to terms with the emotional challenges of the medical field while also contributing to the case of the week, all of which creates sky-high stakes.
When I chatted with Ritchie Coster ahead of the big Shinwell episode, I noted that I never would have predicted his character going into nursing after his Season 1 arc. With the first season now available streaming with a Paramount+ subscription and Season 2 in full swing, the Walking Dead vet shared:
Me neither! I did know, because when I had the initial meeting with [showrunner] Craig [Sweeny] about this job, we talked, and he said, ‘Yeah, if we go to a second season, I want to make Shinwell into a nurse.’ And I thought he was joking. I thought it wasn’t really going to happen, but it did. I resisted it at first, but now I’m going with the tide, and I’m loving it.
Shinwell was certainly an asset to John in Season 1 whenever he wasn’t mixed up in the Moriarty mess, but never really as part of the medical field himself. In fact, after Shinwell’s (albeit reluctant) betrayals in Season 1 and the guilt he felt for being blackmailed, it was hard to picture a way for Watson to keep him with the team. The nursing student storyline has done the trick, with Coster now “loving” it. He went on to share his take on Shinwell’s actions in Season 1:
Because I played Shinwell, I had to be on his side in the first season. I never thought what he was doing was that bad. I mean, yeah, he was betraying his best friend and destroying everyone’s work and everything, but he was trying to protect people that he loved. So he was between a rock and a hard place. Nonetheless, his actions weren’t glorious. What works for me is to just put what happened in the first season on top of a life lived in ugliness and crime. There’s a lot of penance to be paid. Redemption is what he’s seeking, and that’s a very, very compelling thing for me to play. That’s an interesting box for me to root around in.
For better or worse, Shinwell’s actions weren’t condemned all the way into Season 2 like Ingrid’s were. He did resist early enough that he wasn’t part of the incident that nearly ended in Stephens’ death, and his betrayal in messing with John’s meds definitely led to an interesting story with his hallucinations of Sherlock, then voiced by Matt Berry. Shinwell now has penance on the mind, after being stuck in a lose-lose situation in the first season.
Of course, Shinwell working as Watson’s right-hand man whenever possible on the team doesn’t mean that he’s in a position of power as a nursing student, and “Happy When It Rains” explores how Shinwell adapts to his place in the hospital as well as the strain of his work as a nurse. Ritchie Coster previewed:
This is an instance of Shinwell recognizing immediately that he has to go and fetch a grown up to deal with this. It’s good that he’s the first one to spot it, but that’s where his involvement kind of ends, because people that actually can say medical terms and know what they’re talking about have to come and deal with it. In the meantime, he gets to look at a load of wounds that have passed oozing out of them, which was great.
Let it not be said that Watson doesn’t go the extra mile to show off the grossness of wounds and severity of illnesses on CBS! After the show even found a way for the title character to drop an F-bomb on network TV in the previous episode, anything feels possible. Check out the promo for the new episode that will put Shinwell in the spotlight:
Tune in to CBS on Monday, November 3 at 10 p.m. ET for the “Happy When It Rains” episode of Watson Season 2, or stream next day via Paramount+. While it remains to be seen how well (or not well) Shinwell is doing after the events of this episode, it’s only a matter of time before Robert Carlyle returns as Sherlock Holmes, and the relationship between Mary and John may continue to take some unexpected turns.
