Right Under Our Noses! Why Chicago Med Fans Should’ve Seen Marcel’s Exit Coming From a Mile Away
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Another doctor has scrubbed out of Gaffney Chicago Medical Center. Ever since news of his exit from the One Chicago franchise, fans have wondered how Dr. Crockett Marcel will leave Chicago Med and what would happen to Dominic Rains‘ character. After months of questions, the answer is finally here, and it looks like viewers should’ve seen his exit coming from a mile away.
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Rains, who previously starred on primetime shows like NCIS, 24, and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., joined Chicago Med as Dr. Crockett Marcel, a new trauma surgeon fellow at the Chicago Med’s Emergency Department, in Season 5. After five season on the series, news broke in June 2024 that Rains would be leaving Chicago Med after Season 9 and not be returning as a full-time cast member for the show’s milestone 10th season.
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Rains follows in the footsteps of several other Chicago Med actors such as Brian Tee (Dr. Ethan Choi), Yaya DaCosta (April Sexton), Torrey DeVitto (Dr. Natalie Manning), and Nick Gehlfuss (Dr. Will Halstead) who have also left Chicago Med in the past few years. But what was Rains’ reason and how was Dr. Marcel written out?
Why did Crockett Marcel leave Chicago Med?
Chicago Med showrunner Allen MacDonald confirmed to One Chicago Center in September 2024 that Marcel was written out off-screen on Chicago Med Season 10 and will not appear in the new season. “Dominic does not return at the top of season 10 and we explain his departure to you pretty quickly,” she said.
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As for how Marcel will leave Chicago Med, MacDonald hinted that the reason has to do with how Marcel’s storyline ended in the Season 9 finale, which saw him learn the tragic news that his former patient — a young boy whose planned liver transplant was cancelled due to an infection the child contracted — had died. He also learned that his patient’s father, who begged Marcel not to cancel the transplant, had committed suicide following his son’s death.
Following the news, Marcel told nurse Maggie Lockwood that the deaths reminded him of the helplessness he felt when his daughter, Harper, died of Leukemia shortly before her first birthday. The final ended with viewers wondering whether Marcel would retire as a surgeon and leave Chicago Med completely.
More: Meet the Chicago Med cast’s kids in real life
“The reason I decided to do that was just simply I felt that Dr. Crockett Marcel had already been written out at the end of last season,” MacDonald said of the decision to write out Marcel off-screen. “It was left in a way that he could come back or if he left it, it was understandable that he had some issues of his own that he needed to work out in terms of his grieving process for the loss of his daughter. I didn’t really feel there was a need to bring him back to write him out because I felt that had been done.”
Why is Dominic Rains leave Chicago Med?
While Rains (who has deleted his Instagram) hasn’t confirmed the reason for his exit from Chicago Med, at the time of writing, it’s assumed that he left for the same reason as other One Chicago alums who have exited the franchise recently including Chicago P.D.‘s Tracy Spiridakos (Hailey Upton) and Chicago Fire‘s Kara Killmer (Sylvie Brett) and Eamonn Walker (Chief Wallace Boden). That reason is for different opportunities as an actor.
“Honestly, longevity is really just part of it,” Chicago Fire showrunner Andrea Newman told TVLine in January 2024. “[In] storytelling and in terms of real life, 12 years is a long time and things need to change, just dynamic-wise. You want new characters and you want new dynamics.” She continued, Actor-wise, 12 years is a long [time]. Nobody expects in TV [that] they’re going to be anywhere for 12 years, I can say that for sure, from all sides,”
Spiridakos, who starred on Chicago P.D. for seven seasons, also confirmed to NBC Insider after her exit that she left because she wanted to “switch it up” as an actor. (Rains, for his part, was on Chicago Med for five seasons.) “It was a really hard decision, and I don’t know that there’s ever a right time,” she said. “I think I’ve been on the show for just over seven years, like seven and a half-ish years, and I was just wanting to switch it up and kind of see what else was out there. That was really it. I’m so close with everybody. With our producers, Gwen, our writers, our cast, our crew. It was a really difficult and emotional time, for sure.”
Though Marcel won’t appear in Chicago Med Season 10, MacDonald confirmed that there’s a place for him should Rains want to return.
“[The One Chicago Universe] is this big world of three shows and people come in and out of it. Specifically to Chicago Med, people come in and out of it because it is a world inhabited by characters and there are some from the past that have gone and we have new ones,” she said. “There are no solid plans at the moment for this, but I’m very interested in bringing back characters from the past and seeing how they react to the characters they knew in the past, and with the new characters that we’ve added because I would love to see that and I think the audience would too.”
Chicago Med is available to stream on Peacock.
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