Key Points
- Firehouse 51 responds to a deadly airfield jet emergency linked to a mysterious chemical.
- Major character deaths and reunions drive emotional fallout for Stella Kidd and Voight.
- Writers coordinated impressive research for credible aviation and chemical elements in the crossover plot.
The #OneChicago crossover episode for 2026 began with Firehouse 51 called to an airfield when a passenger jet suddenly went silent mid-air, triggering a high-stakes emergency. The plane landed itself – Google it, it’s possible — and everybody on board was dead from a mysterious chemical that also later affected several of the first firefighters who went onboard, killing one.
Despite the FBI’s belief that it was a terrorist event, Haley Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) disagreed with her superiors – yes, she’s an FBI agent now based out of Detroit as part of a Drug Enforcement Task Force – believing it was connected to a man on the plane [Omar] who was a known smuggler. Of course, she was right and that led her to a reunion with Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer), who was also tracking down the drug case.
In the end, it turned out Omar was smuggling in the drug for a man who had been burned badly in a fire years earlier that cost him his parents and baby sister and was out for revenge against the first responders who he felt mishandled things. Two of those were Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) and Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney).
In this exclusive interview with the showrunners – Andrea Newman for Chicago Fire, Allen MacDonald for Chicago Med, and Gwen Sigan for Chicago P.D. – Parade got the breakdown on several key points from the night’s thrilling crossover episodes.
Allen, talk a little bit about Hannah’s (Jessy Schram) decision to go out to the ambulance and deliver the baby, which put her health in jeopardy, especially because she didn’t know what the chemical was. Her actions caused Dean Archer (Steven Weber), her baby daddy, and her to have all this friction because he felt she wasn’t keeping their unborn baby safe.
Allen MacDonald: Well, I think Hannah really bristles when somebody tells her that she’s being irresponsible or reckless and can’t make decisions for herself. I think [she finds] that infuriating. And I think that Archer — for better or worse — is a little more old school in that way, and that comes out at times. I think that’s when they have their not-so-great moments together.
So, how do I feel about Hannah going to that ambulance? I think that she did the right thing because she took all the proper safety precautions that she needed to go out there. She didn’t want to stand on the sidelines when people were dying — when a baby could be dying inside the mother that had just died.
Andrea, you killed off Macy (Carlita Tucker). What went into that decision? I see that as something affecting Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) going forward.
Andrea Newman: It definitely affects Stella. We had done a story earlier about Macy being the first Girls on Fire candidate to go to the Academy and come out as a firefighter. So, she represents a lot for Stella, for Stella’s decisions in terms of Girls on Fire, in terms of supporting these young women going into the fire department.
Macy’s symbolic in a lot of ways. That’s why I felt she was the right one to [die] to have Stella have to struggle with the aftermath of [her death]. She definitely does, but she does it in the way that Kidd always does things, which is she’s become a real leader and a lieutenant, so she knows that it’s not just her that she has to get through these moments; it’s all of her people underneath. So, yeah, she’ll struggle going forward with it, but she’ll also help other people who are struggling with it, too.
Allen, what did that feel like for your doctors who think they should be able to save lives and they didn’t know what this chemical was, so they couldn’t make the right choices, which led to Macy’s death.
Allen: That’s what makes it so suspenseful is that idea that our first responders on the line here are trying to desperately figure out what’s going on so they don’t make any mistakes and unnecessarily lose lives. It might not be an accident that we want it to be scary in that way.
Gwen, one of my favorite moments is at the end when Halstead and Upton apologize to each other. Talk about the emotions behind that and was that now closure for the characters on the show/ or might they pop up again at some point in the future? Maybe not together, maybe separately.
Gwen Sigan: I think the door is always open. We loved having them and always would. I think it was a door sort of opening for them, right? It wasn’t full closure, but this was certainly the first time in person that they had spoken about anything that had happened between them. I think the fact that in that scene, Halstead apologizes for all of it, and he’s so open, and he’s so taking responsibility for it and accepting that what he did, he did all of it in the wrong way and that she can apologize as well.
I think a lot of the root of their problems was something that they both caused. So, I think it’s showing that the two of them are in a better place, that they can speak like that because a couple of years ago, I don’t think they could have, and that there’s hope for them. Where they go after that scene and what they do and how long they stay in touch, I think all of that is a possibility and we wanted to end it with some possibility for the pair of them.
When you mentioned in the beginning that this was taking place in the past, we didn’t know that Voight (Jason Beghe) and Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) had ever met before. I don’t think they have a relationship, but they were both at the scene of this one thing, this one fire. So, does Voight now feel responsible for it? At the time he thought he was doing the right thing, saving the little boy.
Gwen: That’s what’s interesting about it. Something we love doing on our show is that you can think you’re doing things for the right reasons, you can think you’re doing everything right, but you don’t always get the right result.
I think for Voight in that moment years and years ago, he thought this is the right thing and time’s going to be on my side and it’s going to work out and I’ll be fine. And it didn’t. It didn’t work out.
I do think he takes ownership of that in this crossover and ownership of the fact that I did make that choice and whether it was intended or not, those consequences are mine, which is a nice place for him to get to. It’s something he doesn’t always get to, but it’s nice to see it.
Andrea, Pascal was arrested. Will that play out that he’s been arrested, or will the FBI realize, ‘Oh, no, we were out of line’?
Andrea: Well, he’s walking out of jail at the end of the episode, but there are a lot of ramifications coming out of this, and it’s not going to be easy for him. I think for Pascal, this is part of this journey that we’ve talked about, which is he started as an outsider. He started as somebody who was coming in to replace Boden (Eamonn Walker), the beloved Chief Boden, and he was happy to be an outsider and happy to keep a distance, but then things changed and he got closer and closer, especially when his wife died last season and the firehouse came together for him. I think all of a sudden, he realized how connected he was to these people in a way that he didn’t expect. The crossover pays that off in the ultimate way, which he makes the biggest sacrifice for both 51 and the firehouse and for PD as well, for his cohort in the past, Voight.
So yeah, he’s going to have to face the consequences of this going forward. It is not going to be easy for him.
I had to Google ‘can an airplane land itself?’ Who came up with that idea? Then, also, who came up with this chemical that was so hard to figure out?
Andrea: Those are amazing writers. Allen, you can speak to that.
Allen: Something we’ve talked about several times today is just the airplane of it was something that had been discussed for many a crossover before this one. And it always felt like too much or a step too far, and then we finally found a way to make it work this year.
All those things that you’re asking about were put together by the three writers that were designated by Andrea, Gwen and me to be on the crossover. Because what we have to do, we have to choose one and then they function as their own writer’s room, they break the stories together. They interface with us. They interface with Wolf Entertainment on many Zooms, all of us all together.
Andrea: I remember seeing Victor [Teran] digging into the chemical research, getting into picking out these names and we were trying to say them. All three of them were doing this incredible research to get to the bottom of it from the investigative standpoint, to the medical, to the effects that it has immediately on the fire scene.
Gwen, any word on when we might see Patrick John Flueger, who plays Adam Ruzek, come back?
Gwen: He will be back soon. Yeah, he’ll be back soon.
