Chicago Fire fans won’t be left with the survival thrills they’ve come to know so well after more than 250 episodes in May, but there are certainly some emotional thrills that will pay off soon. Along with the other two One Chicago series, Fire will return for Season 13 on the 2024 TV schedule on September 25, and showrunner Andrea Newman spoke to CinemaBlend about revisiting Severide’s desire to start a family with Kidd as well as the shocking Damon reveal from the end of Season 12. In the spring finale of Season 12, amid Boden and Severide’s emotional speeches upon learning that Benny Severide had another secret child, the longtime Squad loyalist suggested to Kidd that they start a family of their own. For her part, the truck lieutenant looks completely taken aback by what he says… although that might have something to do with the fact that he dropped it that morning as they were getting ready for work.
To her credit, Severide immediately acknowledges that starting a family is going to be a bigger decision for her than it is for him. When I spoke to Andrea Newman about the upcoming season, I noted that it was something I really appreciated about Severide and asked if we wanted to see more of that. She responded: Absolutely. Part of their journey as a couple is this, and it’s exactly what you said, which is we love the idea of exploring the difference between when a male firefighter decides, ‘Oh, I want to start a family,’ and when a female firefighter decides that. How different are those two in terms of what they’re going to have to go through to have that family, and where Kidd’s mindset is headed. This is an interesting one for both of them, because they both have family situations and painful pasts, and they don’t have great parental figures in their lives. Can we start over? Can we do this? Do we even know how? And what would that mean for Kidd, especially?
Chicago Fire has dealt with firefighters as parents many times over the years, from the Herrmann family to Dawson and Casey’s struggles to Cruz and Chloe having a baby boy and adopting Javi. What we haven’t seen is a pair of CFD officers weighing the decision to start a family and all the complications that entails. After all, Stella Kidd has been crushed as a truck lieutenant ever since she was promoted. The host further explained: Does she want to stop being Wonder Woman for a little while, or can she do everything? You know, those are all questions.
It will also be interesting to see how long it takes before we get an update on how Kidd and Severide feel about starting a family. On the subject of the time jump from the end of the Season 12 finale (currently streaming via Peacock) with Damon’s bombshell reveal that he’s Severide’s half-brother, Andrea Newman shed some light on a few things: We don’t want to go too far beyond that. We want to keep the urgency of that and Severide’s reaction to that and how he’s going to tell Kidd. We keep that time frame up to that point, right after that. We have a little bit of time there, but then we jump forward six weeks, which is when other shows are jumping forward so we’re in the same time frame. We have a brief moment with Severide and Kidd to live through the fallout of Benny Severide’s son, and then we jump forward. So while the three shows of One Chicago will be more or less in sync with each other by the end of the upcoming premieres (with new Chicago Med showrunner Allen MacDonald saying the same for the medical drama), Fire will take a moment right after last season’s suspenseful breakdown. Andrea Newman previewed: This is a really big moment for Severide, where he’s thinking about having his own family, and then all of a sudden, he has this half-brother who shows up that he feels responsible for in a lot of ways, because he’s not close to him, doesn’t know him, and Damon is so eager to get to know him, but Damon plays it that way by keeping it a secret that creates tension with Kidd, who’s his boss. So there’s a lot of conflict that needs to be resolved between Kidd and Severide about Damon, and then Severide and what that relationship is going to be like with Damon is something we’re going to explore in the first few episodes.
Would Chicago Fire really be a show without some complicated family and fire department dynamics that come with various crises of the week? The show has been on the air for thirteen seasons for a reason! While the good ship Stellaride often has to navigate some rough waters, their journey with the idea of starting a family seems like a highlight of Fire starting this fall.
