Chicago Fire has always excelled at creating compelling, long-running partnerships. For years, the heart of the show lay in the brotherhood between Lieutenant Kelly Severide and Captain Matt Casey. Since Casey’s departure, the series has searched for a new dynamic to anchor Severide’s journey, finding temporary success in his marriage to Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and his mentorship of various younger firefighters.
However, in the lead-up to and execution of Season 13, one connection emerged as potentially Severide’s most significant and intriguing in years: his professional partnership with the controversial Chief Dom Pascal. This alliance—a study in contrasts between the reckless fire cop and the guarded administrator—offered a fresh, necessary challenge to Severide’s character. Yet, the narrative path chosen by NBC for Season 13, particularly involving the divisive arc and eventual resolution with Pascal, has proven a massive misstep, botching Severide’s best professional relationship in nearly a decade and robbing the series of a rich source of future drama.
The Unlikely Bond: Why Severide and Pascal Worked
Chief Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney), introduced as the replacement for the beloved Chief Wallace Boden, was never meant to be a simple replacement. He arrived at Firehouse 51 with a murky past, an abrasive demeanor, and a fundamental disagreement with the house’s culture. He was a necessary irritant—a force meant to challenge the 51 family’s complacency.
Severide, initially Pascal’s chief antagonist, gradually developed a complex, fascinating rapport with him. This relationship worked for several critical reasons:
1. Professional Challenge
Pascal wasn’t simply a pencil-pusher; he was a highly experienced Chief who saw the dangers of Severide’s impulsive nature. He consistently challenged Severide’s arrogance and forced him to defend his methods, both as Squad Lieutenant and as an arson investigator. This provided a compelling, high-stakes professional tension that Severide hadn’t faced since his early battles with Deputy Chief Riddle.
2. Shared Darkness and Arson Work
The two men were ultimately bound by a deeper, shared passion for fire investigation. Pascal was the first leader since Boden who not only recognized Severide’s OFI (Office of Fire Investigation) talent but actively utilized it. Their joint, off-the-books investigations—especially surrounding Pascal’s past and his involvement with corrupt officials—created a thriller subplot that placed them on equal footing. They were two highly skilled, fundamentally isolated men who understood the darkness required to fight fire crime.
3. The Trust Dynamic
Unlike Casey, who was Severide’s established brother, the relationship with Pascal was about earning trust from scratch. Their connection was fragile, rooted in mutual suspicion that evolved into a grudging, high-stakes respect. For Severide, a man whose life is defined by loyalty, being trusted by a figure as skeptical as Pascal was a key emotional victory, and vice versa. It was a partnership based on shared competence, not sentimentality, making it feel organic and fresh.
The Botched Exit: Season 13’s Narrative Misstep
The culmination of Pascal’s Season 13 arc—his descent into a vigilante investigation following his wife’s tragic death—was intense and promised to finally test his alliance with Severide to its breaking point. However, the narrative chose to resolve the conflict by removing Pascal entirely, thereby eliminating the relationship’s potential.
Pascal’s exit—being arrested for the attempted murder of the man responsible for his wife’s death—served as a convenient, albeit dramatic, way to clear the chief’s chair and place Severide in the temporary command role.
This decision, however, feels narratively lazy and destructive to Severide’s growth. Instead of forcing Severide to navigate the ethical, political, and emotional complexities of having an ally like Pascal—a man he respected but couldn’t fully vouch for—the show opted for the clean, permanent separation.
The mistake here isn’t just the loss of Pascal as a character; it is the erasure of the professional obstacle he represented to Severide.
- Loss of Conflict: With Pascal gone, Severide now assumes the highest authority at 51 without any immediate external challenge. The built-in tension of having a skeptical, highly skilled chief above him—a chief who saw his ambition and his flaws—is gone.
- Wasted Arc: The writers spent an entire season building the idea that Severide had a rare, non-romantic bond with a formidable authority figure. To simply discard that dynamic in a final-act arrest wastes all the rich, simmering drama inherent in their collaboration.
- The Severide Ceiling: The show has struggled for years to push Severide’s career forward without completely sidelining him from Squad 3. The relationship with Pascal was the perfect vehicle for this: Severide could remain Squad Lieutenant but operate as Pascal’s de facto OFI special operative, keeping him in the action while giving him high-level administrative support.
The Divisive Character Return that Compounds the Error
The decision to abruptly conclude the Pascal dynamic is further soured by the concurrent return of another key character or the anticipation of a return in Season 13. While the show occasionally brings back Matt Casey (Jesse Spencer), that character’s role has become one of nostalgic stability. The show needs forward-looking relationships, not nostalgic callbacks.
The biggest mistake is the perceived missed opportunity to introduce a new, dynamic foil to Severide who could fill the void created by Casey’s departure and the dramatic, yet final, exit of Pascal. Instead of nurturing the difficult, complex bond with Pascal, the writers seem poised to default to the familiar, which—while comforting—does not drive character growth.
The lack of a sharp, high-ranking professional antagonist or partner means Severide’s professional life, outside of his marriage, is now relatively frictionless. For a show that thrives on internal conflict, this smooth sailing undermines the drama.
Severide deserved to have his professional competence tested and validated by a continuing, evolving relationship with a peer or superior who wasn’t his wife. Pascal was that dynamic. He was the complicated answer to the question, “Who challenges Severide now?” By botching his conclusion and eliminating him as a professional foil, Chicago Fire may have inadvertently traded its best source of new, mature drama for a predictable leadership shuffle.
Ultimately, the renewal of Chicago Fire for Season 13 should have been a chance to deepen the show’s most complex current relationship. Instead, the forced exit of Chief Pascal, the very character who unlocked a new professional layer to Severide, proves a significant failure in the show’s otherwise enduring narrative formula. Severide’s promotion to temporary chief is less a triumph and more a surrender to a less complex path.
