Chicago Fire Season 13 ended with one special surprise for Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and her husband, Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney). The couple have desired to expand their family for some time now, and adoption had been nailed down as the preferred route to getting it done. However, before the season ended, Stella announced to her husband, “Kelly, we’re pregnant.” Given that Stella had preferred adoption, this switch is notable and significant. While speaking with TV Line, series showrunner Andrea Newman was quizzed on what this change means for Stellaride in the coming season.
“I think so,” Newman responded on the potential for exciting new storylines in Season 14. “The difference between when a male firefighter gets pregnant and when the female firefighter is pregnant, I think, is really interesting to explore and how each are affected, and also being parents at the end of the day and the stakes. When they’re a couple, there’s stakes, for sure, but when they’ve got a baby, the stakes go through the roof. So those are all the things that we can play with going down the line. Exciting.” As previously mentioned, adoption was the preferred route to parenthood for this couple and this dramatic change, as welcome as it is, seemed unexpected.
Stella Kidd “Has Changed” in ‘Chicago Fire’ Season 13
Newman explains that a lot of it had to do with the evolution of Stella’s character, noting that “she has changed” and much of that transformation is tied into her brief experience taking care of Natalie. An equal key factor was the events at the hospital during their attempt to adopt a baby. Despite the disappointing nature of it all, it made the couple stronger and shown Kidd she was a lot stronger than she envisioned previously.
“They really got close in this season in a way that they haven’t before, and it came to a head with the hospital storyline with the baby, because they butted heads a bit during that story and they were kind of on other sides, and then they ended up talking that out and coming together. I feel like, at the end of that episode, they were stronger than ever, and how they left that episode, even though it was a beatdown, emotional, was much stronger as a couple.”
While Stella’s pregnancy is a welcome surprise and how Season 14 explores it will be quite exciting to see. That will not be the only big change coming when the show returns in the Fall. From character exits to changes in career priorities, Season 14 of Chicago Fire seems poised to have everything. There would even be a shake up of the CFD itself in Season 14 Newman revealed recently:
“[We had] an auditor coming in and saying, ‘Look, CFD is cleaning house, and things are going to get shaken up,’ and there’s nobody be safe in this shakeup. So next season is going to be about how the s**t really hits the fans once that mandate comes down and how things get shaken up and how our team can hold together as a family while all this craziness is happening around them.”
