‘Chicago Fire’ season 3 finale recap: Spartacus

Spoiler alert! This post contains details about the Chicago Fire episode that aired Tuesday night.

Somehow, we made it through a Chicago Fire finale, and only one person’s life is at risk. And guess what? It has nothing to do with a fire!

More specifically, after weeks of building up the tension between Team Truck and Team Squad, the finale saw things come to a head when Severide finally found out the truth about this buddy Rice: Turns out, he is a ducker. As a result, Severide sends his friend home to be a father, and Cruz—yes, Cruz!—takes his place on Squad. Apparently after he and Sylvie broke up, Cruz decided to make a change in his life.

And despite Otis not being a fan of Cruz’s disloyalty at first, he later changes his mind—partly because he’s a good supportive friend and partly because he now gets to drive Truck 81. (Okay, it was mostly about the truck.)

As for the rest of the tension in the house, all it took was one incredibly suspenseful fire to bring everyone together: When Dawson and Severide find themselves trapped inside a burning building, it’s Boden who heads in after them, but only after he forbids everyone from House 51 from following in his footsteps.

And when the battalion chief decides to turn the hoses on the building, it seems Severide, Dawon, and Chief Boden are a lost cause … until in the last moment, Boden finds his firefighters and gets them all out alive.

By the time they return to the firehouse, it’s evident that this is no longer a house divided. Example A) After Cruz got overly emotional at the scene and threatened the battalion chief for turning on the water, he was asked to step forward and suffer consequences for his actions. Instead, in a moment reminiscent of Grey’s Anatomy‘s LVAD ordeal, everyone stepped forward, each one claiming to take responsibility for threatening the battalion chief. As a result, there’s no way to know who actually did it, and Cruz was let off the hook. Teamwork makes the dream work, y’all.

But, this is a finale, so let’s get to the twists: Sylvie is hooking up with Chicago P.D.‘s officer Roman, it looks like Dawson is pregnant, and Matt Casey is officially missing. As for the friendly stripper? She’s dead in Casey’s apartment. Let’s hope Voight has a plan to get Casey out of there.

Altogether, the finale did exactly what we wanted it to do: It put an end to the in-house fighting and introduced intriguing new twists (and one potential baby bump). Added bonus? The blossoming friendship between Severide and Dawson. After all, there’s nothing like a near-death experience to bring two people together.