Fans of NBC’s summer medical drama The Night Shift may have to wait until June 22 to see more of the action at San Antonio Memorial Hospital, but they won’t have to wait as long to find out what some of the storylines for the upcoming season are.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, at NBCUniversal’s Summer Press Tour, show co-creator and executive producer Jeff Judah previewed the upcoming season, which will feature the fictional hospital merging with Veterans Affairs for a pilot program. As a result, many of the episodes in the show’s fourth season will focus on veterans.
“It’s exactly going to be incorporated. We want to bring the military medicine in to the show,” Judah said at the panel.
The show is also taking it a step further by having veterans write and direct an episode and veterans will be guest stars for the same episode.
Throughout the show’s run, there have been military themes featured. One of the main characters, TC Callahan (Eoin Macken), is a former Army Ranger who has PTSD from serving in Afghanistan and seeing his brother get shot.
In the third season finale, viewers saw TC and Syd (Jennifer Beals) trying to give medical attention to refugees at the Turkey/Lebanon border before their camp was bombed, potentially killing TC and Syd.
And in a season two episode, former First Lady Michelle Obama and Second Lady Jill Biden made appearances as themselves to thank the doctors and nurses of the night shift for their work in veteran health.
The Night Shift‘s fourth season premieres on Thursday, June 22 at 9 p.m. on NBC. Shooting of the fourth season is about to start in Albuquerque, New Mexico.