Buckle up, Kelly Severide!
Chicago Fire may have gone for long stretches of time without Taylor Kinney as Kelly Severide in the last couple of seasons, but the next episode in the 2024 TV schedule looks like it could make up for all the action he missed within the span of one hour. After “The Wrong Guy” saw him juggling administrative duties while filling in for Boden, he’s about to be in a fresh kind of danger, which may involve another firefighter’s secret getting out.
First things first! Chicago Fire packed so much into the promo for the next episode – called “Inside Man” – that it already looks like it’ll be one to rewatch.
While we can only glean so much from 15 seconds of preview footage, it looks to me like Severide is filling Truck 81 up with gas when the vehicle is stolen… with the Squad 3 lieutenant in for the ride of his life. With everything from somebody at least injured, a mushroom cloud explosion, and what appears to be a destroyed Truck, he might wish he was still back at 51 filling out Boden’s paperwork!
As for the secret that might come out, we need to look to NBC’s episode description for that, which reads:
Severide goes for an unexpected ride on Truck 81. Ritter’s worlds collide when his secret cop boyfriend helps 51 track down Severide and the missing rig.
Ritter was uncomfortable with the idea of his coworkers learning that he was dating a cop earlier in Season 12. At the time, it was sort of played for laughs, when a floater at Firehouse 51 mistakenly thought that Ritter was hiding that he was gay. At the time, Ritter had to clarify that everybody knew he was gay, but the cop part was the secret.
Ritter wasn’t around back in the day of Brett and Antonio Dawson dating, and he has valid reasons for wanting to keep the relationship private. That may not matter if his “worlds collide” due to Severide’s crisis on Truck, though. I can’t imagine that anybody at 51 would judge him for his relationship, but what matters is how Ritter feels about the situation.
And I have to wonder if the entire episode will be centered on the crisis with Severide, with Ritter’s plot connected to it. A few stories from “The Wrong Guy” seemed like they could extend through to the rest of Season 12, particularly with a man trying to extort Cruz for money over Javi despite the family finding happiness together and Stella facing Girls on Fire being shut down.
Instead, both of those stories were resolved by the end of the episode on May 1, clearing the way for what I hope is an intense hour of Severide action next week. I did get a kick out of Cruz planning a sting to catch the extortionist, because I initially thought that Chicago Fire had recast Chloe before the reveal that this “Chloe” was actually an undercover cop.
Tune in to see what happens to Severide and if Ritter’s secret comes out to the rest of Firehouse 51 with the next new episode on Wednesday, May 8 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC. You can also revisit earlier episodes of Season 12 streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription. All three shows of One Chicago have been renewed for the 2024-2025 TV season, so be sure to keep watching!
