Chicago Med Showrunners' Exit Is One Chicago Franchise Milestone

• Longtime Chicago Med showrunners Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider are leaving after Season 9, marking a significant change for the series.
• Frolov and Schneider’s departure is a bittersweet occasion, as they provided behind-the-scenes consistency and creative direction for almost a decade.
• The change in showrunners will likely lead to a different feel for Chicago Med, with potential impacts on character storylines and cast turnover.

The biggest Chicago Med surprise is happening off-camera. Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, who have served as showrunners and executive producers since the series premiere, are leaving at the end of Season 9. Not only is this a significant change for the medical drama, but it’s a bittersweet occasion for NBC’s biggest franchise. Once Frolov and Schneider’s last episode airs in May 2024, there will be no more original showrunners left in One Chicago.

Producing turnover is to be expected on long-running TV shows; series go in new directions or creatives want to try different things, just like actors. But the Chicago shows were able to become a franchise in part because Wolf Entertainment found solid writer-producers to lead each series. Frolov and Schneider provided behind the scenes consistency for almost a decade, giving fans one show that still had the same creative direction even as pretty much everything else in One Chicago shifted.

Why Are the Showrunners Leaving Chicago Med?

What Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider Said About Their Exit

The change at the top of Chicago Med is not being dictated by Wolf Entertainment or NBC — it’s coming from the showrunners themselves. “We love Chicago Med and have devoted all our creative energies to it, but after nine seasons we feel it’s time for us to move on and explore other possibilities,” Frolov and Schneider said in an official statement published by Deadline. “We’ve been privileged to work with a great writing staff, production team and a brilliant cast of actors. We will miss them all.” Frolov and Schneider are leaving Chicago Med to pursue other projects, as their nine seasons and over 170 episodes are the longest they’ve ever worked on one TV show.

One Chicago fans may not recall that the duo have been part of some of the biggest series in television history. They’re well-known for another 100-plus episode run on the now-streaming cult classic Northern Exposure, during which Frolov and Schneider won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series for Season 3, Episode 10, “Seoul Mates.” Their other credits include producing and writing on HBO’s The Sopranos and four episodes across the first two seasons of Prime Video’s Bosch. While the duo hasn’t announced what their next TV show will be, they’ll undoubtedly move on to something else noteworthy.

In addition to overseeing the whole of Chicago Med, Frolov and Schneider have been credited as writers on every season premiere, and have written other episodes along the way. They share teleplay credit on the Season 1 premiere “Derailed” with Andrew Dettman, who was the first appointed showrunner in June 2015, but resigned just two months later due to creative differences (per TVLine). While Dettman held the title first, his brief tenure means it’s Frolov and Schneider who’ve been steering the ship since Chicago Med premiered in November 2015 — and they’re the ones who shaped the show into what viewers know and love.

What Does Changing Showrunners Mean for Chicago Med?

It Also Affects the Entire One Chicago Franchise

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When an actor leaves a TV show, fans immediately react to it because they see that person every week and are attached to the character they play. Producer exits are harder to quantify — but Chicago Med losing Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider is a big deal because of the fact that they’ve been involved with the series almost from the start. A good example would be Law & Order: Organized Crime, which has succeeded as it’s also gone through multiple showrunners. Audiences can’t get that upset about Organized Crime changing hands because the change has been fairly constant. In contrast, Frolov and Schneider’s creative fingerprints are all over Chicago Med. Will whoever comes next continue their unique idea of every episode having the same number of words in its title as the season it’s in? The nine-word episode titles in Season 9 have been a mouthful, but they and their writers have pulled it off.

The bigger picture is what should be giving One Chicago viewers even more pause. All of the original One Chicago showrunners and creators, save Dick Wolf, are no longer involved with the franchise. Chicago Fire was created by Michael Brandt and Derek Haas; Brandt left the series before Haas, who stepped away from Fire after Season 11 and turned the reins over to Andrea Newman. Chicago P.D. is credited to Wolf and Matt Olmstead, who left and was replaced by Eid, and the current showrunner is Gwen Sigan. There’s been no announcement about who will take over for Frolov and Schneider, but it’s a sad fact that everyone who defined the One Chicago franchise has moved on.

On a most basic level, that means Chicago Med is going to feel like a different show. How different depends on who the replacement is and how many changes they want to make. If it’s someone who’s already producing on the series — both Sigan and Newman had been with their shows for years before taking over — then the changes might be minor. But that person or persons will have a different creative style, and maybe even other ideas for the characters. Audiences could see more screen time for a previously underused player, or a sharp change in someone’s storyline. The history of Chicago Med has included some abrupt story pivots (see: Ava Bekker being revealed as a murderer), so big, dramatic swings are more of a possibility here than on the other two shows.

What Could Happen Before the Chicago Med Season 9 Finale?

Will the Showrunner Change Affect the Rest of the Season?

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Any noticeable changes on Chicago Med will likely be felt in Season 10, after Frolov and Schneider have officially left, due to the simple fact that television is produced far in advance. That means the showrunners are much further along in the season — and with Season 9 likely to be shorter due to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, they’re probably also closer to the end. It would be sweet and sentimental if the Season 9 finale put a bow on the storylines they’ve plotted for certain characters or otherwise gave Schneider and Frolov a way to craft closure for both themselves and the audience, but writers don’t often get a proper sendoff like Dr. Will Halstead.

One aspect of the series to keep an eye on is Chicago Med’s constant cast turnover. The show has been criticized for years over its habit of writing out characters regularly — some of them coming and going relatively quickly. Frolov and Schneider were never afraid to say goodbye to characters they felt had completed their stories; audiences are still debating the exit of Dr. Connor Rhodes to this day. But Season 9 has introduced more new cast members, with Blindspot alum Luke Mitchell being a major boost to the show and helping to anchor it. In the interest of stability, the new showrunner should want to stick with the current lineup — both to address the “revolving door” issue and to develop these fresh characters who still need to be fleshed out. Changing that one aspect will have a huge impact going forward.

Every fan would say that Chicago Med has had its struggles over nine seasons — maybe moreso than the average long-running drama because of the cast changes. But Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider found ways to keep the show going, and that’s particularly evident in Season 9. The eighth season was a reset in a number of ways; the show had to adapt with both Brian Tee and Nick Gehlfuss deciding to move on, and plot-wise, Season 8 felt like it retconned some of Season 7. Season 9 is the result of all that: characters that feel like they have staying power and stories with new levels to them.

TV shows don’t always learn from their detours, but Chicago Med did, because Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider put in the work to get the show where it needed to be. Whether or not fans liked every choice they made, they never sat on their laurels. They laid the foundation for Chicago Med, then they shook it up and built another one, and their departure signifies turning the page to the next chapter of the entire One Chicago franchise.

Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. on NBC.

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Chicago Med

The city’s most highly skilled medical team saves lives, while navigating their unique interpersonal relationships.

Release DateNovember 17, 2015Creator(s)Matt Olmstead, Derek Haas, Michael BrandtCastLorena Diaz, Nick Gehlfuss, Torrey DeVitto, Marlyne Barrett, Yaya DaCosta, Brian Tee, Oliver Platt, S. Epatha MerkersonMain GenreDramaRatingTV-14Seasons9Number of Episodes166 Episodes