When CBS’s Pittsburgh-set medical mystery drama “Watson” (9 p.m. Sunday, KDKA-TV) premiered in January, the first episode featured scenes shot in Pittsburgh over a few days in June 2024, including a confrontation filmed on the Duquesne Incline between Moriarty (Randall Park) and Shinwell Johnson (Ritchie Coster), Dr. Watson’s aide-de-camp.

But when it came time to revisit the incline for the show’s first-season finale, series creator and Pittsburgh native Craig Sweeny said it was less expensive to build a faux — but detailed and accurate — incline in Vancouver, Canada, where the bulk of the series filmed, than to travel back to Pittsburgh.

“When you get to the end of a season of a first season show, you’ve spent everything they’ve offered to you, and in most cases, more, so it was simply not realistic for me to go and say, ‘Hey, let’s shoot this (in Pittsburgh),’ ” Sweeny said. “There are so many expenses involved in moving a whole crew and performers.”

Initially, Sweeny didn’t think he’d be able to have any incline scene in the finale to bookend the scene in the series premiere.

“The line producer controls the purse strings on the show, and if you have a really good one, as we do in Scott Graham, they’ll preserve a little bit of ability to pull off a magic trick at the end of the season,” said Sweeny, who’d mused in a meeting about his desire for another incline scene. “To my surprise and delight, they called me and said, ‘I think we can pull that off.’ ”

Sweeny credited production designer Dustin Farrell and his commitment to recreating the look and feel of Pittsburgh in Vancouver for building a Duquesne Incline replica on the “Watson” soundstage.

“We used the photographer who shot our drone stuff in Pittsburgh to go on the incline and shoot the (footage) that was the background for the green screen,” Sweeny said. “We began the season shooting on the incline in Pittsburgh and the very last thing we shot for the whole season was on our recreation of it on the set in Vancouver.”

And, yes, the Duquesne Incline set has been preserved, so viewers will likely see it again next season. (CBS already renewed “Watson” for a second season that will premiere in early 2026.)

Each “Watson” episode typically focuses on a medical mystery while also including scenes devoted to the ongoing story of Moriarty’s efforts to harm Watson (Morris Chestnut) and his colleagues.

In the May 4 episode, Watson’s team member twins Dr. Stephens and Dr. Adam Croft, both played by Peter Mark Kendall, were at risk of death due to a potentially lethal intervention by Moriarty, who blackmailed Watson’s colleague Ingrid (Eve Harlow) into infecting the Crofts. By the end of that penultimate episode, Watson only had enough antidote to save one of the twins.

“The immediate stakes are the sick characters, but the other thing to be tracking is: Can the dynamics that hopefully you’ve come to enjoy over the course of the season survive?” Sweeny said. “There are multiple betrayals and secrets and everything is coming out, and the question is, what among these relationships that we’ve created can be preserved?”

While the “Watson” season finale wraps up aspects of the show’s ongoing serialized plots, the episode also leaves viewers with questions about the future of some characters.

Whatever happens, Sweeny said “Watson” will retain serialized stories that arc over the season alongside case-of-the-week medical mysteries.

“We intend to keep the Sherlockian element of the show present each year,” he said. “It won’t be as simple as which new villain pops up and are they now stealing the Post-It notes or the pens from the clinic instead of DNA, but we do have a story we’re very excited about that comes from the Sherlockian universe.”

Already, “Watson” has leaned into Pittsburgh culture with its lead character living in an apartment above the Pennsylvania Macaroni Company store in The Strip and multiple mentions of Lawrenceville restaurant Pusadee’s Garden, and Sweeny has no plans to curtail those local references.

A guest character in episode four, who was clad in a Jerome Bettis Steelers jersey and managed the cadaver lab at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, will return.

“Pittsburghers were like, ‘That felt like that was somebody who was of the city,’ ” Sweeny said. “We’re going to bring her into the clinic, so she’ll be working there in the new season.”

Flinty Pittsburgh Police Det. Lestrade (Rachel Hayward) will also be back.

“In a weird way, that episode almost feels like the pilot of a new show where it’s a doctor and cop who form a bond to investigate cases together where stuff crosses over,” Sweeny said. “I loved her performance and we will definitely use that character quite a bit.”

Sweeny said the “Watson” writers reconvened to begin breaking stories for the second season in mid-April. Filming will begin in mid-June in Vancouver and Sweeny hopes to bring the cast and crew back to Pittsburgh to film new exterior scenes for season two, but he said that will depend to some degree on how many episodes CBS orders for the second season, which has not yet been determined.

“(Getting back to Pittsburgh) is the goal always.” Sweeny said. “The original goal was to film the show in Pittsburgh (entirely). I wish I lived in a world where I was able to decree that and just simply make it so. The goal now is to return several times throughout the season, and we weigh several factors into our economic ability to accomplish that, (including) the size of the episode order … because that affects how we defray costs per episode and increases our ability to travel.

“So when I say, ‘That’s my hope,’ I’m not trying to be evasive. I’m trying to get all my ducks in a row to fight for as much time in my hometown as we can get.”

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