Change doesn’t come easy, as audience members witnessed during Wednesday’s season 13 premiere of NBC’s consistent hit series Chicago Fire. And if you’re showrunner Andrea Newman, you’d probably go a step further and say viewers will sense a sort of “spooky” sensation, as key castmembers were confronted with issues and people who haunted them in their past.
In the premiere, viewers saw the entire Firehouse 51 try to adjust to not having the influence of their beloved former Fire Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker). Boden had gone on to higher aspirations within the hierarchy of the Chicago Fire Department, and now the crew is left with a very different personality as their new leader in Dom Pascal, played by new addition Dermot Mulroney. Pascal lets the firehouse know off the bat that he’s nothing like Boden, nor is he trying to be. He expects firefighters to follow his specific rules. And to let off stress, the new chief likes to go at it with a punching bag in the station.
To get a clearer picture of what season 13 will look like for Chicago Fire fans, The Hollywood Reporter recently caught up with its show’s captain, showrunner Andrea Newman, to find out the new season’s theme; what some of the hottest story arcs are to pay attention to; and how the show’s beloved Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) might handle sitting in the chief’s seat after Boden’s message at the end of season 12.
Last season, a big arc dealt with the older firefighters in the house fighting against the physical and mental changes that come with aging. Fans of the show seemed to gravitate quite favorably to that storyline. What can they expect for season 13?
Big time. It’s funny, because it is season 13. And in the beginning we kept calling it Lucky 13 or Spooky 13, all these different things. And then we realized that thematically shadowed a huge part of this season. It’s the shadow of Boden hanging over the firehouse, and Severide [played by Taylor Kinney] has the shadow of Benny [his father, played by the late Treat Williams] always hanging over him. Finding this brother in this relationship with half-brother Jack Damon [played by Michael Bradway] really reminds us of that shadow. We’ve got Carver [played by Jake Lockett] with the shadows of his past. And now Cruz [played by Joe Minoso] is going to be haunted by a ghost from his past in the season, too. So, we have a lot of ghostly, spooky happenings going on this year.
