Brace yourselves, Chicago Fire fans. The heat is coming in strong when season 8 picks up, just moments after the finale ended.
“We’re in the basement, the boiler’s about to explode. There’s fire everywhere and all of our characters in jeopardy,” co-creator Derek Haas tells Us Weekly exclusively, before confirming that — this time — it’s life or death. “It’s not one of those promotion fake outs, which we’ve certainly been guilty of in the past. There’s going to be a real tragedy that will involve, not only our 51 family, but also innocent people. This is a real nasty call to start out the season.”
He also reveals that in addition to the death, “there’s an injury that’s also bad” and everyone is affected.
At the end of last season, the One Chicago community was surprised by both Chicago Med and Chicago P.D. announcing cast exits; Colin Donnell and Norma Kuhling would be leaving Med while Jon Seda was departing P.D. However, Haas didn’t yet know who would be leaving Fire when their finale aired.
“Sometimes you write yourself, as they say, into a corner and you just say, ‘OK, you know what? I’m going to write this as a finale, and then I know I’m going to have a couple of months to think about how we’re going got resolve this,’” he tells Us. “About two weeks after our hiatus started, I was talking to our head writers and that’s when we came up with where this was going to go.”
It’s safe to assume the entire mood will be somber in the premiere, but it’s not all sadness in season 8. Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Severide (Taylor Kinney) finally got back together during the season 7 finale and are in a good place when the season picks up.
“I think he’s just going to try to live up to the words that he said to her in the finale, just to be the boyfriend [and] the man that she deserves,” Haas says. “There’s going to be pressures on them, but it’s not pressures on their relationship as much as external pressures on them as people and it’ll be about it is the way that they support each other.”
Chicago Fire returns to NBC Wednesday, September 25, at 9 p.m. ET.
