It’s hard to know if a return for Yuri Sardarov is in the cards for Chicago Fire, but one thing seems certain now, we cannot rule it out. After all, the Season 11 finale of Chicago P.D. saw Alvin Olinksy, Hank Voight’s dead partner, return in dream form to give Voight a pep talk as he found himself in the clutches of a serial killer. So, with Chicago P.D. opening up the door by bringing up a dead character in a dream sequence, that means Chicago Fire could do it too.
The character of Otis was killed what feels like a lifetime ago in procedural drama time, at the end of Season 7 of Chicago Fire. The cliffhanger for that episode, which saw the firehouse respond to a fire at a mattress factory, was resolved in the Season 8 premiere with the heartbreaking confirmation.
Otis hasn’t been forgotten, though. Joe Cruz named his kid after him, and Firehouse 51 has certainly kept the memory of him alive. That means there could easily be a storyline where Cruz or someone else in the Firehouse could end up seeing Otis in a time of need. The crew at Firehouse 51 gets up to pretty dangerous stuff every episode, after all. The situation Voight got himself in that required his best friend to show up wouldn’t even be that hard to replicate.
And though there are plenty of people who would work for this specific appearance, no one would pack more of a punch than Joe Cruz, Otis’ best friend. When Otis died, his last words were, after all to Cruz. And those words were “Brother, I will be with you, always.” There would be no better way for Otis to prove just that than for Yuri Sardarov to make an appearance in Joe Cruz’s time of need. It would very much parallel what Chicago P.D. just did with Hank Voight and Alvin Olinksy, and Joe Minoso would play it perfectly.
We’re not exactly looking forward to Chicago Fire putting Cruz in danger for this to come true, but the truth is Cruz is always in danger by default. So if Cruz is going to be in danger, we would like to believe his friend Otis is going to have his back, from wherever he is, and is going to help Cruz get out of whatever jam he’s in. And if that means we can get Yuri Sardarov back, a least for an episode, we won’t complain.
