There’s a new battalion chief at Station 42 on Fire Country, and nobody seems to particularly like him.
As revealed at the end of the Season 4 premiere, Brett Richards (played by The Pitt’s Shawn Hatosy) has been tapped to lead the grieving-but-resilient firehouse, which Division Fire Chief Sharon Leone is none too happy about. The fact that Richards is taking over her late husband Vince’s station is a particularly difficult pill for Sharon to swallow given that Vince hated Richards. And they’re not the only ones at 42 who aren’t fans of the new leader.
Below, showrunner Tia Napolitano previews Vince and Richards’ beef, and how Jake – who had his heart set on the battalion chief job – will react to losing out.
Soaps.com: Manny describes Sharon as catatonic in the premiere. How is she dealing with her grief in the upcoming episodes?
Once she’s back in uniform at the end of those eight weeks, at the end of the premiere especially, she’s back. She’s, of course, grieving. She’s not the strongest she ever has been, but she’s back at work, especially with Brett Richards in Vince’s house. You know, she’s got to keep watch. She has to show up for her people, and she does.
Soaps.com: Speaking of the new battalion chief, what can you tease about what happened between him and Vince? That was a tantalizing little tidbit.
Yeah, and we will get into it. They hated each other in the academy, which was many chapters ago in all of their lives. We will get into it. We will come to learn, surprisingly, who Brett Richards is. He starts to show us, piece by piece and more and more, as he loosens up over a couple episodes that he’s with us.
Soaps.com: How is he going to shake up the station?
Oh, he is for sure going to shake up the station. Forty-two is the house of Leone, and he is not a Leone. And he straight up says, “I’m going to reinvent it, not rebuild it.” So he’s an adversary. He’s very serious. He comes at people. He analyzes them. Everyone’s gonna feel under the microscope. Jake and Bode have all this conflict in [Episode] 401. They’re gonna have to decide whether they want to fight each other or band together to fight Richards. Sharon’s gonna have to look this man in the face that Vince hated all the time. I think no one’s job is safe. The culture sure isn’t safe. People will wonder, what’s the fate of the station? What’s the fate of our team?
Soaps.com: With Brett coming in, where does that leave Jake, who was studying for the battalion chief test? Is he reconsidering that other job that he was contemplating taking before?
Poor Jake, man, not getting battalion chief. And I think in [Episode] 401, he really thinks he is going to get battalion chief. It’s the heartbreak. Jake’s gonna have to look around Edgewater and see that he has other reasons to stay other than a job. Violet’s here, the Leones are here, Eve is here, Manny’s here. The station means something to him, even if he is not the leader of it. He’s also a young firefighter with a long career. His ambition does not die with the loss of this job. The road’s just going to be a little bit longer.
Soaps.com: Is his relationship with Violet still going strong? Because Eve told him to remind her that he’s alive.
I think, yeah, he was burying himself in work. We’re trying to honor the authenticity that it’s really hard to date a first responder. It really is. And with Jake throwing himself into studying for battalion chief, what room does he have left for a relationship? But they will be a couple that we’ll come to invest in and fight for.
