It seems a familiar face will soon be checking back into Chicago Med with a return in season 11.
It’s been another interesting season for Chicago Med fans. Although the show has not had to endure as many casting shake-ups as its sister series, Chicago Fire and Chicago PD, season 11 has brought about both unexpected returns and surprise absences.
Among the characters who have taken fans on quite a rollercoaster ride this season has been Dr. Naomi Howard. It looked as though Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut appeared to have exited the show following the events of season 10, when Naomi chose to leave Gaffney Chicago Med to start fresh. Fast-forward to the Chicago Med season 11 premiere, and Chestnut made a welcome return as we learned that Dr. Lenox had reached out to offer Naomi a new general surgery resident position at the hospital.
As the season progressed, it looked like the show was going to finally utilize Naomi in a larger capacity as the show thrust her into a new love triangle storyline with Dr. John Frost and Chicago Fire’s paramedic Lyla Novak. We saw Naomi struggle with her feelings for Frost, not wanting to act on her romantic interest by avoiding bringing romantic entanglements into the workplace.
By the time Naomi gained the confidence to come clean about her feelings to Frost, he had sparked up a relationship with Novak that quickly has taken off like wildfire – pun most certainly intended. After professing her feelings for Frost and leaving him speechless, it seemed like we would get to see more of the love triangle dynamics explored in the episodes that followed.
Much to our surprise, Naomi has not appeared in another episode since episode 7. The tenth episode of the show then offered up a disappointing update in which Frost referred to his relationship with Naomi as being more of a flash-in-the-pan situation. That line seemed to indicate perhaps the show had dropped the love triangle storyline before it really ever got started, but it seems there is still more to come.
Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut confirms return to Chicago Med
After taking an unexpected step back from the show, Ashlei Sharpe Chestnut has confirmed her return to the Chicago Med set, ensuring we will see more of Naomi at some point this season.
“Sundance recap coming soon, but first… got to save some lives,” Chestnut wrote via her Instagram stories in which she shared a candid shot in scrubs from the Chicago Med set.
It’s unclear when Chestnut will make her official return as Naomi, but it’s likely her return will come in the final stretch of the season. If we had to take an educated guess, it seems most likely that she will return sometime after episode 13, which is the 2026 One Chicago crossover. This means we’ll likely have to go a few more episodes before we see Naomi back, as episode 13 will air on March 4.
It’ll be interesting to see how the writers bring Naomi back or explain her random absence from the show. There is a chance that we might see her pop up and there’ll be a throwaway line about Naomi being out of town, but it’s more likely that she’ll just return, and the show will act as though she hadn’t been missing for several episodes in a row now.
