‘Chicago Fire’ Boss Explains ‘Heartbreaking’ Set-up for Cruz’s Exit: ‘He’s Such a Beloved Character’

Coming into Chicago Fire Season 15, fans had a couple big questions: Would everyone emerge from the major finale fire unscathed, and how will the show be writing out original star Joe Miñoso, exiting early in the season? Well, the premiere seems to answer both, though fortunately we do have more episodes of Cruz to come. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Victor Teran about that and much more. Warning: Spoilers for the Chicago Fire Season 15 premiere ahead!

Picking up right where the finale left off, the members of 51 work together to get themselves and the civilians trapped in the building out safely. In order to do so, Cruz breaks through a wall. But when he goes to crawl in to help two still trapped, debris falls on him, and three months later, the results of the MRI of his fractured spine aren’t good. There’s only a sliver of healthy tissue across the fracture, so even if he ever gets out of the wheelchair, he’s never going to be a firefighter again, he tells Herrmann (David Eigenberg), who’s feeling guilty since he had volunteered to do what Cruz did but the other man told him to leave.

In slightly happier news, at least Severide (Taylor Kinney), captain and remaining at 51 (versus taking the OFI job offered), proves that he wasn’t at fault for the two civilian deaths in the fire.

Meanwhile, Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) is training the new group of candidates, and they’re very competitive considering 51 is their last post before getting assigned to a house or as a floater. Because of that, she makes it clear that they’ll be evaluated as a group, not individually.

Below, showrunner Victor Teran explains that heartbreaking injury for Cruz and what’s next.

Cruz is paralyzed, his spine fractured, doesn’t sound like there’s much hope for him as a firefighter. Why have him be the one injured this way and this seemingly be his exit story?

Victor Teran: Why him? That’s a very tough question to answer. I think sometimes it’s like the luck of the draw in life and it wasn’t like we don’t love him. In a way, I think that the fact that he’s such a beloved character is what felt like it would make it the most heartbreaking exit. And part of the reality of having a show go for as long as it goes is that eventually you have to start evolving and bringing new — I mean, this job in particular is one that you can’t do forever. People get hurt, people retire, you don’t have old man firefighters. And so there is a natural cycling in and out of characters and people. And so we’re in that process. I think that there’s a little bit of it over time. We just try not to change things too much too fast, but I think it’s just the circle of life, if you will.

Elizabeth Sisson/NBC

So what is ahead for him as he continues to recover and see how much he can recover? Joe is so good in the premiere with the beginning of this arc.

Oh, yeah. He will not disappoint. He gets better and better in each of his episodes in his final arc, and it’s going to be an emotional rollercoaster. I mean, that’s the only thing I can really promise you is that we really tried to go for it and really tried to honor the reality of this and the complexity of it. And it’s not just about one thing. It’s about who he is as a person. It’s about what the rest of his life looks like. It’s about his family and these twins that he’s about to have. And so we really tried not to shy away from any of that but really lean into it.

You didn’t really address Herrmann’s guilt with Cruz between the two of them — it came up in the conversation with Mouch (Christian Stolte). Are we going to see Herrmann and Cruz talking about that on screen?

We will see it addressed definitely on screen. They have a really beautiful arc, and it’s complicated, but they will talk, and we’ll see them meet it head-on. I don’t want to tell you much more than that because I think there’s some surprising stuff that happens between them.

Did you ever consider killing anyone off?

We consider it every season, I will tell you. We really do because it’s just something real. It keeps us honest. It keeps the audience honest, and it honors the true nature of this job where people do die pretty regularly. And our consultant, Chik [Steve Chikerotis], who’s a producer on the show, there isn’t a story that he tells that doesn’t involve somebody that he knows that he was close with who passed away. And so we have to look at that in the face and we think about it, but in the end, it felt like too cruel for a fate for our good friend Joe. But I think ultimately what we’re going to get out of it is much, much better and even more poignant in some ways because I think when a character dies, you kind of have to skip over it a little bit to not live in the grief of it for too long. Here, we really get to unpack it in all its emotion and complexity.

Yeah, and we’ve seen that before, going back to Shay’s (Lauren German) death, there had to be that time jump.

Yeah, exactly.

Severide and Kidd have that conversation about how he can’t become a different person just because of the job change and her pointing out he can’t be afraid to evolve either. How’s that going for him this season to find that balance he has to now?

It’s not going to be easy. I think it’s going to be a rocky road, and I think it’s going to come with some interesting revelations about himself. He and Kidd will have to figure it out together because she’s on a leadership trajectory of her own, and I think those two things are really going to play off each other. So it’s going to be fun and interesting.

Especially because this is coming as he’s adapting to everything changing at Squad because of what happens to Cruz, too…

He’s dealing with a lot of change, and it’s not comfortable. And I think Severide, one of the things is that he is a guy who is always in command, and right now his world has been shaken up to the point where he’s now been pushed out of his comfort zone, and we haven’t seen that in a really long time. And he’s a different person than he was the last time he was taken out of his comfort zone. And so he’ll have a different set of reactions.

Elizabeth Sisson/NBC

Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) left again. Was the plan always to write him out like you did as kind of just this was a visit, nothing’s changed about the circumstances for him, or did you consider anything else happening?

I mean, we consider lots of different possibilities, but at the end of the day, it felt like his story had really come to a nice conclusion at the end of last season. And so because we left this cliffhanger, we wanted to honor all of that and make sure that we gave him a last word, especially as it relates to Severide, because he really is responsible for shaping Severide’s decision, for advocating for him to be the leader at 51. And yeah, so we definitely wanted to give him a last word on all of that. And I think he says something really interesting to Severide.

So, the reporter Jacob seems to be set up as recurring, possibly a new love interest for Violet (Hanako Greensmith). What can you say about that? And are we also going to continue, at the same time, to see him clashing with 51 over any future stories he’s writing?

We decided that he would be a reporter for that exact reason, that it puts him potentially in conflict with 51. It can also make him an ally in certain stories. He also is a window into Violet’s past and where she came from. And that was probably the deepest motivation for fashioning this character and bringing him into our world is to create an entree into this that we haven’t seen. I mean, it’s kind of amazing that we don’t know all that much about Violet and where she comes from, and we thought it was high time to answer some questions about her, and we’re going to do it in a big way.

We see her ignoring that phone call.

Yeah. What is that about?

What can you say?

I can say that it will come back, and you’ll find out what that phone call was about.

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You also have Episode 300 coming up. What can you say about that episode, and what can you say about anyone coming back for that episode or just in general this season?

Well, the 300th is going to be a big deal, and we really are making it more about Cruz than anyone. We thought about having the usual thing — not the usual thing, but the thing we like to do — which is to bring legacy characters back for milestones. But because of what was happening with Cruz, we really wanted to make it his moment and not take away from that. So that’s what it’s really going to be about ultimately.

What I can say overall is that I think the way we’re starting is part of a conscious approach to not shy away from the conflict within the family, and we’re going to see a lot of that play out. And there’s always the love, and there’s always the friendship and the laughter, but what makes it interesting is the way that sometimes you hurt the people you love the most, and those are the people you can be the most yourself with. And so that can be pretty fraught sometimes. So we’re leaning into that.

What can you tell about any returning characters in general this season?

We always will figure out places to bring people back. There’s no one I can name-check right now for you, but that’s always a possibility that we keep our eye on.

Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC