Warning: The Pitt season two spoilers ahead!
We’re in the final countdown for the season two finale of The Pitt that airs Thursday, so yes, I’m going all in this week on Pitt coverage. You’re welcome! Dr. Trinity Santos was such a fully realized character right from the start: acerbic, sarcastic, defensive, all to protect an unbearingly sensitive heart inside. Isa Briones does a brilliant job playing Santos, subtly shifting from bravado to vulnerable, from confident to humiliated. So it’s no surprise that in a new interview with Decider where she’s asked about key moments from this season, Isa’s answers read like an acting master class on subtext, behavior, and motivation. And she has some takes that will be shocking to some!
Why Santos can’t be more honest with Whittaker: She has the experience of the people in her life leaving her. I mean, she talks about her best friend in Episode 15 of Season 1, where she took her own life. So she kind of has built this worldview where people she gets close to either hurt her or leave her, and that is very triggering. So just even though she doesn’t admit ever that he’s her friend, of course he is, and she does love him. Like she cares so much for him. He has, I think, been a really great person for her to be around and to not always be alone because she can so often isolate herself. Then hearing that he’s going to leave, it’s just like, “Oh, there I am. I’m being proven right. Everyone’s going to leave me.”
Santos and Langdon have friction because they’re similar: They both suffer from addiction, just different forms. Yeah, I think that’s why she hates him so much because she sees how similar they are. She hates it. And that’s why he is so triggered by her, because he sees how similar they are. You often hate in other people what you hate about yourself. All of those things kind of compounding leads to that panic that we all know when we lean on a vice like that, when you feel like, “Oh, I just, I need this. Where can I get it?” And that panic that comes in.
Why Santos didn’t report Langdon: I think it shows, like, she’s not as evil as people like to make her out to be. [Laughing] She really could have. She could have. She could have told everyone, but she didn’t. I think it’s because as much as she’s a very imperfect person and can sometimes not be the nicest, she still knows the difference between being a little mean and being like, “Oh, this is something else.” As someone who I think struggles with so much of her own stuff and her own forms of addiction, I think there’s still a part of her that’s like, “I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me. I wouldn’t want someone to tell the world what I’m dealing with and struggling with.”
Being angry at Langdon saves Santos from looking at herself: There’s something comfortable about living in anger, I think. Because if she did report him and do like that right thing, then that would be done and then she’d have to deal with herself again. I think it’s easier to be angry at someone and be like, “I kept this for you.” Like I kept this secret. It somehow leaves a comforting thing of, like, “You’re on the hook for me.” It’s comfortable to be angry at someone and put your anger in an outside source, rather than back at yourself, just like she does with self-harm. Like, it’s always like put this anger and sadness somewhere else.
What? Santos and Langdon are similar and that’s why they butt heads?! I TOLD you she had some shocking takes! But the thing is, it makes total sense once she spells it out. And yeah, I can easily say that I’ve had that in my life — someone making me upset, only for me to later unpack that the upsetting factor was something I recognized in myself. While I never thought of Santos as “evil,” she is undeniably rough around the edges. Who can forget Dr. Mohan in season one saying, “Are you aware you have an aggressive energy, Trinity?” So on that note, I loved hearing Isa explain that Santos didn’t report Langdon because she extended him the kindness and discretion she would want for herself. In addition to plenty of other mitigating factors, like the fact that Santos clocked Langdon stealing pills on HER FIRST DAY there, and what an awkward, no-win situation that put her in. I always thought she did the right thing reporting it to her attending. Darn, all this just makes me wish, again, that there had been more Santos-Langdon confrontations this season. At least we know those two theater kids are supporting each other on Broadway right now.
Lastly, I didn’t think anything much of Santos spending so much time charting this season (she’s a doctor and it’s part of the job), but apparently that was because Isa had an appendectomy in the middle of filming! Cue the method acting jokes…
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Photos credit: Warrick Page/HBO Max via Warner Brothers Press
