There’s a lot more to explore in Season 2 than Danny and Xander
Netflix scrubs in with its first-ever English language hospital drama, Pulse, and the timing couldn’t be better on the heels of Max’s popular medical draw, The Pitt. Created by first-time showrunner Zoe Robyn, Pulse combines the best of two worlds, blending the medical procedural genre with romantic drama (think Grey’s Anatomy).
Executive produced by Robyn and Carlton Cuse (Lost, Bates Motel), it follows the complicated professional and personal lives of the doctors and staff at the fictional Maguire Hospital, Miami’s only Level 1 trauma center. Led by resident Danny Simms (Willa Fitzgerald), newly promoted to chief resident following the suspension of the popular Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell), the first season is told through dual timelines — the present day and flashbacks to the not-so-distant past.
What transpires is a turbulent 10-episode first season that charts the consequences of Danny’s harassment claim against Phillips as the ripple effects reverberate throughout the hospital. Plus, it has everything you love about medical dramas: intense emergencies, love triangles (and secret relationships), and internal power dynamics. “We’ve been working on this for two-and-a-half years, so it’s a long time coming,” Cuse told TV Guide. “We’ve made a show that delighted us and we hope that it will also delight viewers.”
With Season 1 of Pulse streaming on Netflix, here is everything you need to know about a possible second season.
Is Pulse returning for Season 2?
Netflix has not picked up Pulse for a second season (yet), though we’re crossing our fingers and toes that this isn’t the end of the road for Danny, Phillips, and the Maguire Hospital crew.
If Pulse does get the green light for more episodes, producers have plans to broaden the scope of the series’ focus and expand beyond the Danny-Phillips relationship that dominated Season 1. “We have some really wonderful actors and some fun stories that we’re really interested in exploring,” Cuse said. “Hopefully we’re going to get a Season 2. Not only will we get more of Danny and Phillips, but we’re also going to get the opportunity in Season 2 to dig into these other characters [with] a lot more depth.”
As for a potential release date for Season 2, should it happen, we’d expect it to premiere sometime in 2026.
What will Pulse Season 2 be about?
[Warning: Reader beware, spoilers ahead from Season 1!] The main conflict of Pulse‘s first season revolved around the harassment complaint Danny filed against Phillips, which resulted in the latter losing his position as chief resident and suffering a career and reputation downfall. The resulting consequences were felt throughout the hospital, as Danny and Phillips’ colleagues navigated rocky terrain. Despite the harassment case, Phillips found himself quickly back at Maguire to aid Danny and the short-staffed ER amid a violent Miami hurricane that overwhelmed the hospital, creating tension between the estranged lovers and co-workers once their secret relationship came to light. (And you certainly can’t forget Elijah (Jessie T. Usher) as the third point of the love triangle.)
“The story always started with this — with Danny reporting Phillips, the fallout of that, and the eventual discovery of the details of [their] relationship,” Robyn told TV Guide. The only way to tell that story fully was playing with time, hence the bouncing between the present and flashbacks to the past, which chronicled the origins of their secret romance. “One of the things that we were really trying to do with this relationship is show that despite the fact that Phillips put Danny in this very difficult position and despite the problems she was having with it, there was also this love between them. If we had stayed in the present day, we wouldn’t have been able to show the audience the growing romance between the two of them.”
By the end of the season, Danny decided to drop the harassment complaint after much soul-searching and reconciling with Phillips, coming to the conclusion that the end result wasn’t going to be what she ultimately wanted. It didn’t lessen the stress. In retaliation for jeopardizing Phillips’ future, his powerful parents put pressure on the hospital to drop Danny from the residency program — a would-be death knell for her medical career. That’s when Phillips gave Danny the ammo to fight for her spot, coming clean about what really transpired at Kennedy, the hospital he transferred from. Rumors swirled all season long that similar harassment claims were made against him by other female doctors, but those allegations turned out to be unfounded. The truth was far more tragic: A teenage patient died under his care and his parents helped cover it up, prompting his move to Maguire. Disclosing that piece of information would blacklist him from the medical profession for good.
It didn’t have to come to that. Before the hospital’s beachside end-of-year party, Chair of Surgery and Medical Care Natalia Cruz (Justina Machado) all but confirmed that Danny had earned the promotion to chief resident. When it came time to make the announcement formal at the party, the shock was evident when Elijah — who’s not-so-secretly in love with Danny — was tapped for the position instead. And that wasn’t the only major change facing the staff heading into a potential Season 2. Instead of Cruz overseeing both the ER and surgical departments, the ER would have new leadership with Patrick Sanchez (J.R. Ramirez) taking over while Cruz remained chairman of surgery. “There are new relationships, like Sanchez and Cruz, [to explore]; that’s obviously going to be antagonistic,” Robyn hinted. “But we also want to learn more about Cruz through that.”
Sanchez’s rise to the top of the ER food chain also puts Phillips — about to begin the new year as an attending — in a precarious position, since he isn’t exactly buddy-buddy with his new boss. There’s also the not-so-tiny issue of Phillips going to the hospital review board and telling the truth about what happened at Kennedy, putting his medical license and future in jeopardy — all because he was inspired by Danny to be “more like her.” There are other storylines left dangling: Sophie (Chelsea Muirhead) coming close to professing her love to Camila (Daniela Nieves) only to discover she’s engaged and Tom Cole (Jack Bannon) in danger of being sued and/or fired for getting intimately involved with a patient as well as hanging out on yachts with hotshot plastic surgeons trying to steal him away from Maguire.
“There’s still a lot that’s unresolved between Phillips and Danny, and that’s the way we wanted to leave it at the end,” Cuse said of ending Season 1 with the pair on solid footing but not quite ready to dive back into a relationship. “There’s a real kind of bittersweet, connected sense that exists between them, but they’re not together. We want the audience to really care about both of them, to care about their relationship with each other, and then we hope we get to make the show for a long time and we get to see how that evolves over time.”
Who’s in the Pulse cast
Jessica Rothe, Jack Bannon, Jessy Yates, Jessie T. Usher, and Willa Fitzgerald, Pulse
Anna Kooris/Netflix
Given the way the first season of Pulse ends, it wouldn’t be surprising to see most — if not all — of the main cast members return for a potential Season 2 due to several unresolved storylines. Because it’s set in a hospital, it also wouldn’t be out of turn to see several new faces roaming the halls. (Ahem, Camila’s fiancé Rodrigo.)
While we wait for official word from Netflix that Pulse will be back for more episodes, here is the main cast featured in Season 1:
Willa Fitzgerald as Danielle “Danny” Simms
Colin Woodell as Xander Phillips
Justina Machado as Natalie Cruz
Jack Bannon as Tom Cole
Jessie T. Usher as Sam Elijah
Jessy Yates as Harper Simms
Chelsea Muirhead as Sophie Chan
Daniela Nieves as Camila Perez
Néstor Carbonell as Ruben Soriano
Jessica Rothe as Cass Himmelstein
Santiago Segura as Gabriel Moreno
Ash Santos as Nia Washington
Arturo Del Puerto as Luis Dominguez
J.R. Ramirez as Patrick Sanchez
Where to watch Pulse
All 10 episodes of Pulse Season 1 are available to stream on Netflix.
