SPOILER ALERT: The following contains spoilers for Chicago Fire Season 14, Episode 17.

Taylor Kinney doesn’t appear in Chicago Fire Season 14, Episode 17, but his character Kelly Severide is still very present. “Sway” casts Severide’s wife Stella Kidd in the role he would normally inhabit, which is acknowledged a lot. On top of that, the primary subplot has to do with Severide’s future. All this means that someone who never appears on-screen comes close to stealing the show.

It now makes sense why Episode 16 was a Severide-heavy hour, because this time around he’s said to be “off at captain’s training.” In his absence, Stella gets to lead an arson investigation involving a small surgical clinic. This follows all of the twists and turns that Chicago Fire viewers are used to from Severide’s arson stories, with Stella herself remarking more than once how she must have picked up some expertise from her husband. Viewers will not be shocked by who started the fire; the why is more surprising. It’s more rewarding to watch Miranda Rae Mayo take center stage again as the episode gives her plenty to do.

But the big twist is also Severide-centric. New chief DeAndre Hopkins does very little to shake off his stereotypical villain persona. He does compliment Stella and Firehouse 51 as a whole, but those kind words get canceled out by the scene in which he calls in an old friend from Personnel to talk to her about his grudge against the Severide family. When she asks why he can’t let this go, she’s speaking for the whole audience too—and his explanation isn’t convincing. He just comes across as another single-minded villain, like when Matthew Del Negro‘s Pat Pridgen was a thorn in everyone’s side.

“Sway” does reveal Hopkins’ evil plan: he’s using Severide’s arson experience against him, filing a complaint for dereliction of duty on the grounds that all those arson cases are keeping Severide from his actual job. In a way, he has a point; Severide seems to get an arson investigator episode or two every season, so the viewers know he does spend a lot of time on the subject. But that also makes the complaint seem particularly nitpicky, since it’s also not exactly a secret that Severide collaborates with OFI on a regular basis. One can only hope Jeanine Mason‘s Lucy will prove her loyalty by tipping Stella or someone else off to this Internal Affairs investigation.

The end result of these two things is that Severide feels like the star of the show, even though Kinney isn’t there. It’s Stella acknowledging she knows all this arson information from her husband, it’s Hopkins talking about Severide to Stella, it’s the subplot being about undermining Severide. Stella is the one saving the day, but Severide’s presence hovers over almost everything.

There’s a comedic subplot about Molly’s hosting a trivia night that never truly gets off the ground, because it’s overshadowed by Chicago Fire going back to a love triangle between Brandon Larracuente‘s Sal Vasquez and the paramedics of Ambulance 61. Now that Lizzie Novak’s fling with Dr. John Frost from Chicago Med is over, Novak and Violet Mikami discuss their shared interest in Vasquez, and then Novak tells Vasquez she won’t date him because he slept with Violet. It’s hard to figure out how to feel about this, since Fire seemed to be telegraphing Violet and Vasquez for a good while. It felt like that was where this subplot was already going. It then also raises the question of what the point of Novak and Frost was, if Fire still wanted to play with this tension and Med has already gone back to setting up Frost with Dr. Naomi Howard. Is Novak just doomed to be a third wheel in other romantic pairings?

“Sway” is a good episode for fans of Miranda Rae Mayo as Stella Kidd, and it does at least elucidate more about the ongoing plot with Hopkins that will ostensibly last through the rest of Season 14. But other than Stella’s star turn, it lacks a real hook. The arson case keeps the episode moving but the whole Hopkins story continues to be grating, and the personal subplot feels like it’s just getting Chicago Fire pointed toward where it had already planned to go. What would be great is to have a next episode with all hands on deck, allowing for more character development, because audiences know there will be at least one more surprise before the end of the season. Every Fire season goes out with a bang, and “Sway” proves that the story isn’t quite there yet.

Chicago Fire airs Wednesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT 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.