Kidd and Severide spoiler alert! Do not read if you have not watched the mid-season finale of Chicago Fire!
Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) finally returned home to the apartment she shares with Severide (Taylor Kinney), very briefly during the last few seconds of the mid-season finale.
The question remains, after almost ghosting Severide and allowing the lieutenant position to be filled, is she staying in Chicago, or will she be heading out again to continue her Girls on Fire program in more cities?
“The timing of her leaving wasn’t ideal professionally with the open spot for the lieutenantship or with Severide, because Severide had a history of going a little off the reservation on her in the past. But she’s never really done that to him,” executive producer and showrunner Derek Haas told Entertainment Tonight regarding the episode’s tense reunion. “And so he doesn’t know quite how to react to that situation of being ignored… or abandoned for the most part, even if the reasons were good and noble. This is going to be a source of concern going into the second half of the season.”
It’s possible that her treatment of Severide and completely blowing off Chief Boden (Eamonn Walker), who was holding a position open for her, might cause some drama between her and her fiancé, not to mention within the firehouse.
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“Unfortunately with Severide, communication is not his strong suit, so that’s going to come back into play. True to his character is maybe not the best communication happening between him and Stella when she returns,” Haas tells the publication. “There’s a lot to talk about — it’s both her place at the firehouse and her place with her relationship with him that’s going to need some major work-in-progress-type renovations.” He emphasized the last part of his answer once more: “Major renovations.”
When Chicago Fire returns next week, it will pick up “immediately after the events of [episode] No. 9,” Haas teases. “No. 10 starts right in the aftermath of that. You’ve got a situation where it’s musical chairs [at Firehouse 51] and there’s one too many people and not enough chairs, so that’s going to come into play.” He’s possibly alluding to Pelham (Brett Dalton) accepting the position Boden was holding open for Stella until he decided to offer it to Pelham once Stella neglected to return his calls.
It seems Pelham is about to be blindsided by Stella, according to Haas.
“You can hear about how much she means to people there, but it’s different when you see it, so [Pelham is] going to be faced with seeing it for the first time” Haas told TV Insider. “And at this point, he doesn’t even know that Kidd and Severide are an item, so that’s going to be discovered as this goes forward.”
Of course, that extra person and not enough chairs could also be alluding to Severide’s professional relationship with the attractive Wendy Seager (Andy Allo), who has been pulling him into OFI work. Haas told TV Insider, “I think Kidd’s going to be very interested to hear that while she was gone, he was taking down arsonists with, as [Seager] called it, his Avenger partner. So yeah, I could see that being at least a topic of interest between the two of them.”
Haas was thrilled to be working with Miranda Rae Mayo again and shared his excitement with Entertainment Tonight, “It was awesome. She was very much missed. We love her. Watching episode 10, I was just beaming — I love Miranda anyway — but getting to see Stella Kidd in action is always fun for me,” Haas praises. “So I was smiling ear to ear watching her back onscreen. No. 9 doesn’t leave you with a lot of warm, fuzzy [feelings], so it was nice to see her back in the scenes.”
Haas also shared with TV Insider where Stella’s mind might be regarding Severide and the Girls on Fire program, “You’ll find that out in the next episode. Sometimes when you get away from the situation you’re in and you’re on that hamster wheel and you take a breath and you’re doing something really worthwhile, it makes you question, what was I doing back there? So she’s done some life evaluating and that’ll come out in the 10th episode.”
Asked whether fans should be worried about the future of Kidd and Severide’s relationship, Haas offered this warning in all his interviews: “Yeah, you should be for sure.”
Luckily, this plotline is going to pick up as soon as the show returns in January so fans won’t be left on a cliff-hanger for too long. It is, however, safe to say, just because Stella Kidd is back doesn’t mean everything is sunshine and rainbows between the two of them.
Chicago Fire will return with the midseason premiere on Wednesday, January 5 in its usual 9 p.m. ET time slot on NBC, between the Chicago Med return at 8 p.m. ET and the Chicago P.D. return at 10 p.m. ET.
Chicago Fire executive producers include Dick Wolf, Derek Haas, Todd Arnow, Andrea Newman, Michael Gilvary, Michael Brandt, Reza Tabrizi, Arthur W. Forney, Peter Jankowski.
Chicago Fire is produced by Universal Television, a division of Universal Studio Group, in association with Wolf Entertainment. Filmed at Cinespace Chicago Film Studio.
Photo credits: Adrian S. Burrows Sr./NBC
