Mitch Ripley (Luke Mitchell) might be suspended from duty, but that doesn’t mean the show is done with him. Chicago Med Season 10, Episode 15, “Down In a Hole” is heavy on the character when he encounters an emergency outside Gaffney and his oath to save lives kicks in. “Ripley is coming back from out of town. He gets distracted and he kind of clips a car, and he’s obviously concerned that he’s hurt someone, and he gets out and no one’s in the car. Then he goes looking for whoever the occupants were, and that’s when he discovers — he’s the one that finds them down the well,” Mitchell told TV Insider about how his character finds himself in this situation in the episode airing on March 5. The episode is atypical for Chicago Med, which occurs almost entirely inside the hospital. The actor teased a “surreal” episode that allowed him to work on location with Chicago Fire’s Christian Stolte. He likened it to a movie, saying,
“It was surreal. It didn’t feel like we’re shooting an episode of Chicago Med. It felt like we were shooting an independent movie because we had three days out on location sort of an hour and a half out of Chicago. And as you know, Chicago Med, we shoot all interiors basically, 99 percent. And so it was just really crazy to be out on location shooting outside, and it just happened to be a cold snap in Chicago. It was like an arctic blast. We were really shooting in some cold temperatures, so that was really cool. We had all these fire trucks and ambulances and cop cars and news trucks, and it felt like a big deal.”
The episode’s promo (above) teases that Ripley might find himself at the bottom of the well, a great metaphor for his current life. According to Mitchell, Ripley is struggling, and this well-rescue couldn’t have been more appropriate. “He’s not great,” the actor said of the character’s emotional standing when the rescue occurs. “He’s not great at all. Yeah, it’s kind of a wild ride that he’s on at the moment. It just feels like after each episode that he’s just going further and further downward. And I fear that he has to hit rock bottom, metaphorically, and maybe physically,” Mitchell said. But away from metaphors, he will be in mortal danger, something the actor teased, saying:
“Ripley’s in all of the trouble. This is at least a near-death experience. I think it’s going to be something that shakes him and a lot of people up.”
Tune in to NBC on Wednesday, March 5, to watch “Down In the Hole” and see if he makes it out alive or if this is the end. Past episodes are available to stream on Peacock in the US.
