This story contains major spoilers from the Chicago Fire premiere.
Chicago Fire did not waste any time revealing who didn’t make it out of that burning building alive.
The third season picked up with Firehouse 51 in the immediate aftermath of the building explosion, but not everyone was able to get back on their feet. Sadly, paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) died within the first few minutes of the premiere.
Jumping ahead six weeks, viewers learned that Shay’s death has severely impacted everyone. Severide (Taylor Kinnet) is missing in action, though he returns to the house by episode’s end thanks to some encouragement from Casey (Jesse Spencer). Also, Dawson (Monica Raymund) has stuck around Firehouse 51 as a fill-in paramedic in lieu of taking her firefighter assignment, likely out of guilt for switching places with Shay just moments before a beam fell on her. Dawson also has a new partner, runaway bride Sylvie Brett (Kara Kilmer). What’s next for the firefighters of 51? EW caught up with executive producer Matt Olmstead to get the scoop:
MATT OLMSTEAD: At the end of season two, we were in the room talking about finales, cliffhangers and what was going to come with season three. I’ve been through it before on other shows, on Prison Break, where you feel a little bit like you’ve exhausted some of the story lines and romances, enough people have slept with each other and you feel a little bit stuck. The conversation came up, “What about killing one of the characters?” Not too far-fetched, because it’s one of the most dangerous jobs in America, working as a firefighter. That started to gain traction because you invariably get a lot of material from the emotional ramifications. We started to map out what it would look like, who it would involve, and at a certain point we all looked around and said this is the way to go. Some people are going to be pissed off. Hopefully people are emotionally affected by the storyline. Having seen the episode after this, it’s pretty much what we had hoped for in terms of shaking things up and giving other characters story lines to play all because of this one event.
How will her death impact the firehouse this season?
The main one is Severide because they were best friends. They were talking about having a kid together. It’s the one person who got him, so to take that away from him, he’s dealing with not only the grief, but he’s imbalanced. He just becomes a little bit detached from people. Not so much a depression, but it’s a, “I don’t really care anymore because nothing lasts forever, nothing makes sense. I don’t really give a sh–. I’m just going to have a good time. I’m going to do my job. I don’t care about consequences. I don’t really care about anything.” It’s ostensibly a guy who’s gone back to his party boy behavior, but what he’s doing is trying to outpace and outdistance this grief that he’s not dealt with and it’s just a matter of when it’s going to catch up to him and what’s he going to do when he ultimately has to deal with that.
How does that impact his relationship with Chicago P.D.’s Lindsay?
It complicates it and temporarily frustrates it. She’s not the kind of girl—as she expresses in one of the episodes—to sit at a restaurant for 45 minutes waiting for a guy to show up because he’s out having a couple of beers with the guys. She’s there for him, that means a lot, and he’s able to express things to her that he wouldn’t to anybody else in terms of Shay’s loss. But it’s just not the right time for her, so she’s there as a friend, but certainly not as a romantic partner. She can tell he’s starting to go off on his own little journey.
You also have Graceland’s Serinda Swan coming on as a love interest for him. Can you say anything about that relationship? Is this someone he might be able to open himself up to?
That’s exactly it. We have it where they meet under crazy circumstances. It looks like another fly-by-night relationship he might have, and they jump into it very quickly. It’s one of those things where only after a couple episodes do they look back and realize what brought them together. They didn’t realize that at the time, but the secret story that we’re playing with her character is she also experienced a loss. She’s not dealing with it. He’s not dealing with it. Only through each other are they able to patch each other up, heal each other up, so that at least they can have both feet on the ground and move forward.
So far, Dawson has stayed at the firehouse because of her guilt over what happened. Will she stick around longer or finally take her new post as a firefighter?
It’s both. She is going to take a post. She wants to be a firefighter. She realized, “I can only hold that out for a while before I start to catch the reputation as someone who doesn’t want the job.” She wants to be a firefighter, but she also knows that she can’t leave her family. That’s why she holds off on her professional pu
