This article discusses a fictional mass shooting.

Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for The Pitt season 1, episode 14.The mass shooter at Pittfest was finally revealed in David Saunders (Jackson Kelly) has been a source of stress. His mother told Dr. Robby (Noah Wyle) and Dr. McKay (Fiona Dourif) about David's list of girls he wanted to hurt, and it seemed like The Pitt was setting him up as a school shooter. Once the shooting at Pittfest started in The Pitt episode 11, it seemed like Robby had made a grave mistake in not calling the police on David sooner.

After weeks of buildup, The Pitt episode 14 revealed who the shooter actually was. That reveal only came, however, after several episodes dealing with the doctors and nurses of Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital wading through a flood of shooting victims. It was also after David had returned to the hospital and been tackled by the police, resulting in a fairly serious head injury. The leadup to The Pitt's shooter reveal was chaotic, intense, and messy, and the actual reveal itself didn't bring much more clarity.

The Pitt Season 1 Episode 14 Doesn't Reveal The Shooter's Identity

The Shooter Wasn't David Or Any Named Character In The Pitt

The Pitt episode 14 did reveal who the shooter was, but it also didn't. David was not the mass shooter in The Pitt, but the medical drama revealed it wasn't any other character shown on the series so far either. The main cast of The Pitt was simply told that an unidentified man was found with a self-inflicted bullet wound to the head and an AR-15. All the buildup, the theories, and the clues that The Pitt left about the shooter's identity were wiped away, and it turned out to be just a random act of violence with no deeper connection to Robby, Dana, or anyone else.

Dana Is Right, The Shooter's Identity & Motives Don't Matter In The Pitt Season 1

The Pitt Focuses On The Doctors, Nurses, & Victims; Not The Shooter

A notable part of The Pitt's shooter reveal (or lack thereof) came from Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa). After the doctors and nurses learned that the shooter was found dead, Javadi (Shabana Azeez) asked if they had determined a motive for the shooting. Dana simply replied, "Does it matter?" Dana is absolutely right: the shooter's identity doesn't matter in the slightest to The Pitt or its characters. The Pitt is about healthcare workers, not criminals. Zeroing in on the identity of the shooter would have distracted from the show's central conceit of showing the trials and tribulations of working in a high-stress healthcare environment.

The Pitt also, rather smartly, chose to move the focus away from the shooter and onto the doctors, nurses, and victims instead. Those are the people that matter: the victims of this senseless act of violence and the people who go to great lengths to save them. Keeping the shooter anonymous robs him of the notoriety and infamy he was likely seeking in the first place, a tactic sometimes employed in real-life mass shootings. The Pitt also offers a lesson for the all-too-common real-life version of its mass shooting event: our focus should be on the victims and the healers, not the shooter.

What Noah Wyle Has Said About The Pitt Season 1's Shooter Reveal

Wyle Said That David Illustrates How Damaging Missed Connections Can Be & How "Thought Crimes" Can Be A Cry For Help

Though it does espouse an important sentiment, The Pitt's shooter reveal turned out to be somewhat divisive and controversial. Many viewers thought the misdirection surrounding David was anticlimactic, as they expected the shooter's identity to connect more to Robby and his failure to report David to the police. Luckily, Noah Wyle, who plays Robby, already offered his stance on The Pitt's shooter reveal in an interview with TV Line, and he brings up some good points.

“[The identity of the shooter] has absolutely nothing to do with the horrific nature of the work that these [doctors and nurses] have to perform in the aftermath of this, so why give it any attention? It’s certainly not going to make any difference at this point in any of the people’s lives who are in our environment.

That said, we did enjoy the misdirection of having a lot of people think it was David or Doug Driscoll or… you know, I even read some wilder theories on that. But that was to underscore the storyline that we really wanted to explore with David’s character, which is about misunderstanding at every level. Trying to connect, but missing crucial moments when that connection really needs to be in place. Otherwise, it can trigger suspicion, paranoia, panic, over-involvement, lapse in judgment — all sorts of things happen in the wake of our bias, our misinterpretation and our misunderstanding of David’s behavior.

Were we wrong to intervene? Maybe not. But we were wrong, in this particular case, to assume that it was 1-to-1. I think that’s another important lesson to take from this — that while thought crimes are not crimes, they can be cries for help, or needs for attention or analysis, and I think that was an important message to get across.”

As Wyle explained, the focus of The Pitt remained on the doctors, nurses, and patients instead of the shooter. He also brought up an interesting perspective on David's story and how destructive misunderstanding can be for a young person who is desperately in need of mental help. By jumping to conclusions about David being an "incel" as Dr. McKay did, David has withdrawn even further, and he's even less likely to reach out and share his problems with a loved one or a professional. That failure to connect, as Wyle put it, is as much a failure of the healthcare system as any botched surgery.

Dr. McKay, however, wasn't entirely to blame for the lack of connection with David. She had very good reason to believe he posed a threat to himself and others, and she intervened when Robby wouldn't. She was wrong in the end, but the consequences of wrongly intervening were far less than the potential consequences of not stepping in. On the other side, Wyle wisely noted that what David needed was help and care, not judgment and police intervention. David's story is a tangled knot of a moral dilemma, and a sign of how expertly The Pitt can navigate these uncomfortable but important topics.