‘Chicago Fire’ Boss on Stellaride’s Surprising News, Finale 51 Shakeups & More

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Chicago Fire Season 13 finale “It Had to End This Way.”]

Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Severide (Taylor Kinney) are officially expanding their family — but not in the way they planned.

The Chicago Fire Season 13 finale ended with Kidd revealing that she’s pregnant! Elsewhere, Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) cleared his own name — with significant help from Severide — in the attempted murder of his wife’s killer; Herrmann (David Eigenberg) announced he was stepping down to being a regular firefighter so Mouch (Christian Stolte) can be lieutenant of engine; and Violet (Hanako Greensmith) and Carver (Jake Lockett) said “I love you” … just as he’s planning to move to Denver.

Below, showrunner Andrea Newman breaks down the finale and teases more change coming in Season 14. (She previously told us that the finale wouldn’t be writing out Daniel Kyri‘s Ritter and Jake Lockett’s Carver and we’d have to tune in next season to see how their absences are explained.)

Kidd’s pregnant. Why did you take Stellaride on the journey you did with having a kid?

Andrea Newman: I think that they both had, especially Kidd, some real issues and hesitations around it, and it didn’t feel right to have her just jump into it from the start. Severide was ready before she was. In his mind, it was simpler for him for a bunch of reasons. It is more complicated for a female firefighter than a male firefighter. And in terms of just how they saw their own childhoods, it was complicated. But for Kidd especially so, and this season was really about her coming to understand all of that and understand the things that happened when her cousin came, and she got to really explore and talk about for the first time her aunt being so depressed after her pregnancy.

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And when she got to see how other people were mothering and go through that medical rollercoaster in Episode 20 of the baby, thinking they were going to adopt, and then at the end, the mom deciding to — her essentially empowering this mother to decide, “I can do this,” that gave her a preview of herself as a mother, I think, and her relationship with Natalie has done that for her. So I think she started to truly believe this is something not only that she can do, but that she really wants to do. And so that’s where in my mind, she kind of left it to the fates. By the end of [Episode] 20, it’s like, “If the adoption thing happens, wonderful. If I get pregnant, wonderful, I can handle anything.” She kind of came to a place where she believed in herself enough to be ready for whatever parenthood was going to look like for her.

So what can you tease about what this parenthood journey is going to look like now that Kidd is pregnant? Are you playing the usual between-seasons time jump so we’ll pick up months into the pregnancy?

Yeah, we always do that time jump. How much of a time jump, we don’t know, but I think the way we are looking at it and who knows exactly what’ll happen with this pregnancy journey for her, but what we want is that idea that parents who are first responders face, which is the stakes go so high. You think they’re high now when you’re married to the person in a firehouse, what if you’re both trapped in a fire together and realizing you’re going to leave your child orphan essentially, which is what happened to Kidd when she was young. So it’s a big fear of hers. And now yeah, the stakes are just up. Everything gets dialed up when you deal with children on a call, you see the face of your own child.

It’s a way to really just amp everything up for these two and test this relationship in all new ways while keeping them in love and sexy and all the things we like about them together. But yeah, parenthood. that’s going to shake it up for sure.

Was the plan always to have Herrmann ultimately go back to being a regular firefighter instead of chief? Why go about it this way?

From the very start, we knew that he had this incredible pressure on him because Boden had said in the finale last year, you’re the one to take the throne essentially. And that coming from Boden, who Herrmann worships, is heavy pressure. And then on the other side, you have Mouch who had come back from his injury in the previous season, “Call Me McHolland,” like a totally rejuvenated firefighter on a war path. “I’m not going to be the couch guy anymore.” So Herrmann’s kind of caught between these two things. And the one thing he never asks himself as the snowball starts rolling down the hill is like, do I want this? And I think Pascal senses that and sensed that from the start, and so he’s sort of testing him along the way, “Try this, come to this event, try leading here.” During the crossover he said, “You don’t get to be boots on the ground, you got to stand here.” And in that moment Herrmann was like, “I can’t. I’ll never forgive myself.” So Pascal’s been watching and that was something we wanted to see, is Pascal turning the screws a little bit. And is he doing it for his own purposes or is he doing it to help Herrmann was always the question. And I think that’s what leads all those roads to the finale and the decision that Herrmann makes.

Elizabeth Sisson / NBC

So with Herrmann no longer going for chief, is Pascal staying especially because he saw how much the firehouse rallied around him all season, with Monica’s death and then in the finale?

Yeah, I think the key moment for Pascal was in Episode 16 and the funeral for his wife, for Monica, when they all showed up and he said, “Sorry, this funeral is family only,” and Mouch said, “That’s why we’re here, chief.” And to me, that felt like the moment that he understood he was part of this family, and he kind of took it in. He’s so hard to read sometimes, Pascal, but that was one moment where you saw it really get him in the heart and the gut. So I feel like that from that moment moving forward, between that and between the deepening bond with Severide, 51 feels like his home. And if he blew it, it’s going to be tragic, if he blew it because of his Achilles heel, Monica and him going after this guy, Severide is going to do everything he can for him, but Severide’s questioning at the end of the day, did he do this, too? So yeah, he’s got some things to deal with to be able to stay at 51,

So he’s definitely staying though now for Season 14?

I think that — yeah, I mean, we’ll see him in Season 14, for sure.

You did seem to set up an exit for Carver, with Denver, but then he and Violet seem to be on the path to getting back together. So what can you say about their relationship now and how his plans might be changing?

Yeah, it’s such a journey for them to both be able to get to the place where they can say that to each other for different reasons, but it’s been burning under the surface for both of them. So it was such a moment to have them be able to say that and come together, but it doesn’t make all the problems go away either. As much as it is sort of soul-fulfilling for them and something they both needed to do, it doesn’t make it go away, the fact that Carver feels like he can’t heal, and he can’t stay sober in the place where he has gone so far off the rails, that doesn’t change just because Violet loves him. It’s everything he’s wanted in the world, but it doesn’t change the reasons he was going to leave. So there are some big decisions to make for the two of them. And for Violet, she would never want to be the reason that he couldn’t get well or if things went badly, she wouldn’t want to be the reason why. So there’s a lot of loaded, heartbreaking, and heart-fulfilling things between them, decisions to be made.

We know that Daniel and Jake are leaving a series regulars. Is everyone else returning in the same capacity?

Well, one of the reasons we did, and this was before we knew exactly how the ax would fall from above, but we wanted to play because it’s very true to what’s happening now in the world, this 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 fan 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.

Peter Gordon / NBC

What else can you tease about next season?

It’s going to be very much about how the change affects everybody, not just from the top, but going down below, too. And one thing we learned when we brought in Pascal that was really fun is it’s not just about getting to know this new character, it’s that a new character brings out new sides to the characters we’ve had for a long time and you see different parts of them and get to know them better. So yeah, next season’s going to be all about shakeups and how everybody reacts and new people and comings and goings.

Is there anything that you had to scrap from this season? Any significant storylines that just didn’t fit in for any reason?

No, the stuff that was really important and emotional, we managed to keep. We found that we had so much driving story that a few — we love to do our comedy storylines as well, and a few of those ended up going by the wayside because stuff got so heavy and so locomotive towards the last few [episodes]. But there’s definitely more to explore in terms of we haven’t seen Kylie [Katelynn Shennett] a lot this season and we love Kylie, so how she fits into 51 next season is a good question. Where the relationships will go between all our main characters and what Herman will do now that he’s taken a pay cut to make money — because we know he’s not the best with money and finances, so he’s going to try and find all sorts of new ways to make up the difference — and yeah, Mouch is going to feel bad about that and try and help and that sounds disastrous to me.

Especially with all the kids that Herrmann has.

I know, I know, exactly. That’s what David said. He is like, “Great, it’s a sweet move, but what about my 800 kids at home? What am I going to do?”

There are quite a bit of shake-ups because Mouch is now going to be lieutenant on engine, there’s the matter of 51 losing both Ritter and Carver, Kidd will be out at some point on maternity leave. Like you said, there could be other shakeups. What can you say about who’s going to be where next season when it comes to all that?

Yeah, I mean, that’s really the question. And there’s also the question of will they — and they have done this in the CFD — start having only two-man trucks? You can only have two people on engine, two people on squad, and then who goes where. And so yeah, it’ll be tight, and we’ll probably see some rotations of people coming in and covering and that can get messy, it’s not as clean, and mistakes can get made when that happens out in the field because the communication’s not as easy. So yeah, I think that’ll be a bumpy and exciting road for the team.

Chicago Fire, Season 14, Fall 2025, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC