Chicago Fire’s Shocking Finale Sees Boden’s Departure, More Changes at 51, and a Shocking Final Reveal

Chicago Fire’s Shocking Finale Sees Boden’s Departure, More Changes at 51, and a Shocking Final Reveal
This story includes spoilers from the Chicago Fire season 12 finale.

Chicago Fire’s season 12 finale packed quite a punch — and that’s not even counting the brawl that ensued when Firehouse 51 arrived at the scene of the restaurant fire.

Before the episode began, viewers knew that Eamonn Walker, who has played Chief Wallace Boden since the show began in 2012, would no longer be a regular cast member of the series, though he’d likely pop up here and there on a regular basis. But how he left remains a mystery. After all, he doesn’t seem to want to throw his helmet into the ring for the job of Deputy Chief, does he?

But when a construction rescue goes wrong and the foreman is left in critical condition after insisting on saving his crew first, Boden has a leadership epiphany — and announces that he’s taking the job just days before the new D.C. is installed.

Shortly after sharing the news with the crew, he privately talks to Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) about his desire to take on the role of Chief. “You can take care of our family,” Boden tells Herrmann, who replies, “I’m a nobody.” Of course, we all know he’s a nobody, that he “leads with his heart,” as Boden puts it.

That’s not the only change the firefighter family faces: Mouch (Christian Stolte) struggles to adjust to the new rig and also reveals that he’s studying for his lieutenant’s test with the help of his wife, Trudy.

In the aforementioned brawl, Sam Carver (Jake Lockett) and Jack Damon (Michael Bradway) get into a fight with a restaurant owner who is a cruel father to his son and refuses to care for his son’s severe burns, which may or may not have been caused by him. This is particularly haunting for Carver, as he was abused and burned by family members as a child, but Lieutenant Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) is unsure why Damon is so agitated.
Soon after, Carver gets into an argument with his lover, Nurse in Charge Violet Mikami (Hanako Greensmith), who accuses him of still having feelings for Kidd. But he insists that this is not the case, that she is keeping him at arm’s length and trying to accept that they are something more because of the death of her former lover, Chief Hawkins. He also confesses that he has fallen in love with her before leaving. Stella then tells Violet about Carver’s past and shares that he took another leave of absence.

Just before learning that Boden has landed the job in D.C., Kidd and her husband, Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney), start talking about having kids, but they have no idea that the family bombshell is yet to come…
The team gathers in Boden’s office to congratulate him and send him off. He insists on not giving him a big goodbye, and Kidd stops him. “That’s the thing,” she says. “There are people you have to say goodbye to, and there are people you can never say goodbye to because they’ve become such a big part of who you are. They shaped you, they trained you, they even taught you everything you know.”

Darren Ritter (Daniel Kyri) chimes in, “Sometimes I look around and I feel like I was born here. I didn’t really know what a firefighter was before, and I didn’t know what a brother was.”

“Now you have to do it all the way through CFD,” Severide says. “And they’re going to see how lucky we are.”

“You’ve made 51 a family, Chief, and this fire station a home,” Joe Cruz (Joe Miñoso) says, and Mouch concludes, “Thank you, Chief, for being the best friend and leader anyone could ever ask for.”

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As the team breaks up to get back to work, Damon approaches Severide to explain why he lost his cool during the restaurant fire — and the real reason he came to 51.

“The guy at the restaurant “There, the father, he was terrible and treated the younger kid like trash, and I had a father like that too,” he said. “His name was Benny Severide.”

Oh. Kelly had a brother he never knew about.