SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chicago Fire Season 14, Episode 16.

Chicago Fire Season 14, Episode 16 is the episode that Kelly Severide fans have been waiting for. “Firehouse 66” is a big, giant rubber stamp confirming Severide’s decade and a half of character growth. The rest of the episode, though, winds up feeling like segments of things fans of the NBC show have seen before.

First and foremost, this is a Severide episode in which he meets the new sheriff in town—and in so doing, realizes that he wants to be in charge of Firehouse 51 after all. His mentor Van Meter spells that out for him (and for the audience) at the end of the episode. It’s a natural progression for the series, because after 14 seasons with a 15th on the way, it would be odd if one of the senior officers wasn’t taking over the firehouse. The characters can’t be at “the best house in the CFD” and not eventually get their shot.

But it’s also a clear line between who Kelly Severide used to be and who he is now. Severide started Chicago Fire as the loose cannon, the show playing his brashness off Matt Casey’s stability. And for years, Severide could make impulsive and sometimes short-sighted decisions (the Vegas wedding is the first that comes to mind, but it’s not a brief list). The series has been working to grow his character with things like his wedding to Stella Kidd and now the idea of them starting a family. “Firehouse 66” is the episode where it’s abundantly clear that not only can he lead a whole firehouse, but he truly wants to.

The way that Severide gets there, though, is pretty typical. This is another one of those “a narrow-minded outsider comes in and wants to tear down Firehouse 51” stories that the series has done before. The antagonist this time is Battalion Chief Hopkins, portrayed by Stranger Things‘ Rob Morgan. The way Hopkins is written, it feels like Morgan was just asked to be as much a jerk as possible. The character has no dimension and he’s another player with a mysterious past. Part of that involves Benny Severide, which leads to Hopkins revealing a motivation that suggests he needs therapy: he was once suspended by Benny, and he’s carried a grudge his whole career, so now he wants to right all the wrongs in the CFD. Obviously the writers want to go in a different direction from Dom Pascal, but Hopkins comes off like a procedural supervillain.

There’s another strong element in Chicago Fire‘s favor, though, and that’s “Firehouse 66” giving a whole subplot to Jeanine Mason as Lucy. Mason deserves all the screen time she can get; watching Lucy do her best to take care of everything, one can’t help but think she’d make Connie proud. The audience also learns Lucy’s difficult backstory: she was drunk driving and nearly lost an arm, prompting her to want to get a job with the CFD in order to make amends. Unfortunately, “Firehouse 66” can’t just tell her story; the episode weaponizes it by having Hopkins be one of the people on that call. He then uses that to tell Lucy she now works for him and not 51, setting this great character up to become a reluctant henchman. Hopefully it doesn’t play out that way for too long, because Mason deserves better than Lucy being reduced to a cog in the Hopkins storyline.

Yet that’s an example of how Chicago Fire Season 14, Episode 16 is treading in too familiar waters—something even the characters point out. Severide tells Hopkins that his complaint about Severide and Stella being on the same shift has already been addressed. Joe Cruz’s subplot is about his son Javi wanting to know his relatives, which Cruz acknowledges they already went through with the scammer who claimed to be Javi’s uncle. There isn’t anything new here in terms of plot, even if the performances are great.

Add in the fact that more characters are missing than are present—it’s said early on that everyone other than Squad 3 is being trained in Colorado—and this feels like an episode assembled together on a small budget to fill a gap in the season. It doesn’t accomplish much other than setting up the new Severide vs. Hopkins storyline, and reminding viewers how lucky they are to have Taylor Kinney and Jeanine Mason in the cast. Hopefully, if this is indeed a placeholder, it should be business as usual next time around.

Chicago Fire airs Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. on NBC. Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC.

Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.