As you get yourself prepared to see Chicago Fire season 13, you may know that there will be a new Chief. However, it is not actually going to be someone you already know — and that may come as a surprise!
Nonetheless, it is absolutely the truth! According to a new report from Deadline, the producers are currently casting a new series-regular character named Dom Pascal — though that name may very well just be a placeholder. He is someone who originally started his career in Chicago, but is coming back to the Windy City after spending a decade as a chief in Miami. The character is reportedly described as “a cheerful person who works well under pressure, and whose leadership style differs from Boden’s.”
Why go this route instead of promoting someone like Herrmann to the part? Well, the easiest explanation is that the producers may have wanted to present someone as a legitimate counterpoint to Boden so that they can have conflict. Promoting someone to Firehouse 51 internally may have meant just getting someone in a top position who would do things largely the same way.
Now that we’ve spelled out all of this, we still personally would not be surprised at all if Dom is only a short-term chief and at some point, a person within 51 does end up getting the job. We’d almost compare it in a way to The Office, where they had temporarily someone who came in from the outside in Robert California before finding an internal candidate to take over from Michael Scott. It’s a convention that comes with having a long-running scripted show that occasionally does require trying to bring new elements to the table.
Hopefully, we will have a chance to learn who is playing this character by the time filming starts off this summer.
