Believe it or not, the fall finale of Chicago Med in the 2025 TV schedule is nearly here, but there were still some big developments in the

penultimate episode of the year. Goodwin had a bombshell to drop on her kids while Bert lay dying, Frost was building a romance with

Chicago Fire’s Novak, and Lenox got a tattoo. But the storyline I’m stuck on is Ripley’s, with the return of the lovely Sadie… and the less lovely resurgence of his pettiness about Hannah and Archer, which I was fine with up until a certain point in “The Story of Us.”

 

 

Now, I wasn’t rooting for Ripley to be the father of Hannah’s baby when Archer was an option after the Captain Crunch foreshadowing, and Luke Mitchell’s performance when Ripley got the painful news that he wasn’t going to be a father after a few hours of getting excited about it was one of my favorite moments from the One Chicago 2025 fall premiere night. Even though I got my way with Hannah and Archer, I was on board with Ripley getting to be kind of petty. Who wouldn’t be?

 

 

And I can’t rule that out, honestly. He and Sadie clearly weren’t on the same page about how well their relationship was going, despite enjoying taking Emilia trick-or-treating in group costumes for Halloween. For her part, Sadie was more comfortable confiding in Hannah – who she knew was Ripley’s ex – about her struggles with her recovery from the Season 10 ordeal, and Emilia calling him “Daddy” seemed to be the nail in the coffin.

The episode ended for them with Sadie telling him that he doesn’t really love her, although she loves him. It didn’t help that instead of reading her mood, he proposed that they all move in together. She just wasn’t ready to put Emilia through getting close to Ripley, since she didn’t think their relationship “would last.” Ouch!

Well, one takeaway for Ripley might be that he should probably stop taking his love interests for walks along the Chicago River when he thinks their relationship is going swimmingly, because both Hannah and Sadie realized they needed to break up in the same place, months apart. The more pressing takeaway is probably that Ripley needs to work on himself as he processes the heartbreak. Whether he truly loved Sadie or not, he was clearly blindsided by the breakup, and he doesn’t quite have a history of handling losses terribly well.

I will say that Luke Mitchell has been great to watch this season even though it’s been rough for his character, and I could definitely see this episode as the beginning for Ripley to start spiraling again. I just hope that he’s done with aiming his bitterness about Hannah and Archer in anybody else’s direction. He’s well past that point in the workplace.

Tune in to NBC on Wednesday, November 12 at 8 p.m. ET for the fall finale of Chicago Med, called “Double Down.” Considering how the medical drama managed to deliver one of my top cliffhangers of the 2024-2025 TV season when Goodwin was stabbed in the Season 10 fall finale, I’m optimistic for whatever’s in store next on Med.