Sacred Heart Hospital isn’t closing its doors anytime soon. The Scrubs revival, which airs on ABC with next-day streaming on Hulu, just landed the news longtime fans had been hoping for since its February debut: ABC has officially renewed the show for Season 2, technically the medical comedy’s 11th season overall since it first premiered back in 2001. The pickup arrived in late April 2026, just two weeks after the freshman revival run wrapped, and it’s the reason Scrubs is back in the conversation months before a single new episode has aired.
The original series ran from 2001 to 2010, spending its first seven seasons on NBC before finishing out its last two on ABC. The revival launched February 25, 2026, with a two-episode premiere that pulled in a cross-platform audience of roughly 9 million viewers in its first week, growing to 11.36 million over 35 days once encores and streaming were counted. That made it ABC’s best comedy debut and top series launch on streaming in over a year. The nine-episode season closed out on a strong note too, earning an “A” reader grade from TVLine, which set up the renewal as far less of a gamble than it might have looked on paper.
What’s pushing Scrubs back into headlines specifically now is the combination of that renewal announcement and the confirmed return window: Season 2 premieres September 30, 2026, slotting into ABC’s Wednesday comedy block alongside Abbott Elementary. That’s a notably fast turnaround for a broadcast comedy, and it means the show skips the usual months-long limbo between seasons. Layered on top of that is the retcon angle — star John C. McGinley confirmed the revival treats the original Season 9 as happening in an alternate timeline, a move that let the writers reset the story cleanly and gave critics and longtime fans something concrete to debate heading into the new season.
Much of the credit for the smooth landing goes to creator Bill Lawrence, who returned to executive produce alongside showrunner Aseem Batra, with Zach Braff, Donald Faison, and Sarah Chalke back as J.D., Turk, and Elliot. John C. McGinley and Judy Reyes reprised Dr. Cox and Carla as well, and Season 2 is expected to dig into a plot thread left hanging at the end of Season 1: Dr. Cox’s autoimmune disease diagnosis. Lawrence has also said the team is working to bring back Ken Jenkins as Bob Kelso, which would round out the reunion even further. Twenty-five years after Sacred Heart first opened its doors on screen, the crew is walking back in like no time passed at all, and this fall, viewers get to see exactly how much has changed.
