Is Severide Leaving Chicago Fire Again? Kelly’s Future at Firehouse 51 Spoiled
With his break last season and his on-and-off filming schedule in Season 12, it’s understandable why fans are concerned about whether Kelly Severide is leaving Chicago Fire again and what could happen Taylor Kinney’s character in the future of One Chicago.
Chicago Fire is NBC’s drama series following the professional and personal lives of firefighters, rescue personnel and paramedics of the Chicago Fire Department’s fictional Firehouse 51. Kinney made his debut as Kelly Severide, a lieutenant at Firehouse 51 and an officer in charge of Squad 3, in season 1 of Chicago Fire in 2012. Severide started dating his now-wife, Stella Kidd, another firefighter at Firehouse 51, in season 4. They become engaged in season 9 and married in season 10.
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Severide has been a fan favorite on Chicago Fire since his debut with the rest of Firehouse 51 more than a decade ago. But with him missing from several episodes in Sason 11, there are a lot of questions about if Kelly Severide is leaving Chicago Fire again and what will happen to Taylor Kinney’s character in Season 12. Read on for what we know about if Kelly Severide is leaving Chicago Fire for good this time.
Is Kelly Severide leaving Chicago Fire again?
No, Severide is not leaving Chicago Fire — at least no yet. NBC nor Taylor Kinney, who plays Severide on Chicago Fire, have confirmed Severide’s exit from the series. ThoughKinney has taken several breaks throughout Chicago Fire Season 12 and sparked speculation he was leaving the show, there’s no confirmation that he’s officially exiting.
Chicago Fire recently sparked speculation Kinney in Season 13 when a promo for Episode 3, “All Kinds of Crazy,” showed Chief Dom Pascal telling a member of Firehouse 51: “You’ve broken my trust, now I’m dismissing you from this firehouse.” The promo then showed Severide, his wife Stella Kidd, and his brother Jack Damon as fans were left wondering whether Severide could be the one exiting the series due to his and his family’s issues with Pascal and the conflict of interest between them.
Despite the storyline, fans believe that Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker)’s exit in the Season 12 finale seemed to confirm his place on the series for a while to come. Boden left Chicago Fire in the Season 12 finale, “Never Say Goodbye,” which saw him step down as chief of Firehouse 51. Given that Boden left Severide in charge of Firehouse 51 while he was out in the episodes before the Season 12 finale, fans speculate that Severide could replace Boden as the new chief of Firehouse 51, which would extend his time on the series and give him a whole new set of storylines to cover. If Severide becomes chief, that, in turn, would leave his position as lieutenant open, which fans also theorize will go to Joe Cruz, who served as a temporary lieutenant while Severide went to an arson investigation training program in the second half of Season 11.
After returning to Chicago Fire in Season 12, Severide left again in Season 12, Episode 3, “Trapped,” which sees him receive a priority overnight envelope from Tuscon about an arson case with the ATF. The episode continues with Captain Tom Van Meter, a commander and arson investigator, trying to convince Severide to re-pursue an arson investigation career.
After his wife, Stella Kidd, confronts Severide about the letter, Severide explains that he’s never hid his passion for arson investigation and thinks the case could open the door for him to run the OFI one day. Severide tells Kidd that he wants to show her that he can handle an arson investigation case and still come back home to her, unlike in Season 11. He promises, however, that he won’t pursue the case if she’s not OK with it. Eventually, Kidd gives him her blessing. “That’s the plan,” she said. “But if you go MIA on me again, if you leave me in the dark.” “I know,” Severide responds. In the final scene of the episode, Severide reassures Kidd that he’ll be back “soon” as they kiss goodbye.
Kinney, who plays Severide, hasn’t confirmed his exit from Chicago Fire, however, showrunner Andrea Newman hinted in an interview with Parade in January 2024 that another character could be leaving the series. “Some major decisions will be made by all three characters—Kidd, Severide and Cruz—in episode 3, and by the end of it, one of them will be heading out of Chicago,” she said, referencing Severide’s feud with Joe Cruz (played by Joe Minoso) in Episode 2. If Severide was to leave, he would join Sylvie Brett (played by Kara Killmer) and Blake Gallo (Alberto Rosende) both exited in Season 12. That character was later revealed to be Severide, who took an extended break from the series before returning later in the season.
While Severide has been somewhat of a side character throughout Chicago Fire Season 12, he took center stage in Episode 10, “Inside Man,” when Truck 81 is hijacked while Severide is on it. “Severide has been trapped behind a desk lately, covering the firehouse for Boden, doing paperwork, etc., and it felt like, in some ways, he was a caged animal ready to break out and go tear some stuff apart. And that’s pretty much what he does in this episode!” showrunner Andrea Newman told TVLine about writing a Severide-centric episode. She continued of suggesting the idea to Kinney, “Taylor is so game for this kind of thing. He loves the action and is a very physical guy. All our cast regularly trains with real firefighters, and Taylor loves that kind of work. As soon as the idea of a Die Hard episode for Severide came up in the writers’ room, we knew he’d slay it.
Why did Kelly Severide leave Chicago Fire the first time?
Why did Kelly Severide leave Chicago Fire the first time? Severide first left Chicago Fire in season 11, episode 14, “Run like Hell,” in which he joined his wife, Stella Kidd, at Molly’s Pub, where she asks him about Captain Tom Van Meter, a commander and arson investigator for the Chicago Fire Department’s Office of Fire Investigation, who Severide has worked with. When Kidd asks Severide about Van Meter, Severide shows her his phone. When Kidd reads Severide’s phone, she looks surprised and asks him, “Wow. What are you going to do.”
The next episode — season 11, episode 15, “Damage Control” — sees Van Meter tell Deputy District Chief Wallace Boden Jr. that Severide has left Chicago to train at “the best arson investigation training program in the world.” He explained that the opportunity, which was too big for Severide to pass on, was at the last minute, which is why Severide wasn’t there to tell Boden himself. While Boden is disappointed, he tells Van Meter that the training will be a positive for Firehouse 51 when Severide returns.
So is Kelly Severide leaving Chicago Fire permanently? The answer is no, at least not yet. News broke in October 2023 that Taylor Kinney — who has played Severide on Chicago Fire since season 1 —was returning to Chicago Fire after almost a year away from the series. Severide returned in Season 12, Episode 1, in which viewers learned of his issues with Kidd.
In an interview with TV Insider in January 2024, Chicago Fire executive producer Andrea Newman explained how Severide’s absence plays a part in his relationship with Kidd throughout Season 12. “Severide’s got some big decisions to make,” she said. “There’s a lot of fun to be had there, and within moments of the [season] starting, you’ll see that although the heat is definitely still there between them, there’s a whole new dynamic that’s been created because of that going MIA that Severide did and there’s some tension and edge between them.”
She continued, “The arson case that Severide throws himself into in the premiere is going to bring up a lot of that stuff. So the audience really hasn’t missed much in terms of what they’ve gone through. We’ll see it all in the premiere, when he agrees to take on this arson case and she isn’t so happy about it. She feels like arson is his drug and he just gets lost in it.”
Newman also hinted that Severide will need to choose between Kidd and his career with the OFI (Office of Fire Investigation.). “That’s the issue at hand [for Severide and Kidd]: How are they going to deal with this going forward and how does it change their relationship?” she said.
She continued, “No couple stays the same forever. But they are deeply in love. They can’t keep their hands off each other. And I think they have to kind of work through this and get to a different place, maybe a better place. So like every couple, it’s real and it has its challenges and it never stays exactly the same.”
Along with Kidd, Newman also explained how Severide’s relationship with other Firehouse 51 members has changed, especially Joe Cruz. “Cruz is really his right-hand man, so there’ll be some lingering issues between Severide and Cruz about that and some stuff to work out there,” Newman said.
Miranda Rae Mayo, who plays Kidd, also told NBC Insider in January 2024 about how Severide and Kidd’s relationship will never be the same after he left her for an arson career. “I imagine that it was quite tenuous. It definitely was, I think, one of the hardest conversations and one of the most emotionally-charged conversations that they’ve had as a couple,” Mayo said of Severide and Kidd’s first conversation since his return to Firehouse 51. “Yeah, I think she has a lot of feelings about him just kind of leaving her in the dark, and he feels really passionately about something, so we’ll see what happens.”
She continued, “Ultimately, these two characters are crazy about each other, they love each other. I think that they both are committed to doing everything they can to make it work.” As for how Severide and Kidd could stay together, Mayo told NBC Insider, “Both have to compromise in ways that are highly uncomfortable in order to have what they want, which is each other.”
Deadline reported in January 2023 that Kinney was taking a “leave of absence” from the series to deal with a “personal matter.” Deadline — which reported that the cast and crew of Chicago Fire were informed of Kinney’s leave on January 20, 2023 — confirmed that Kinney’s leave is temporary and that he’s expected to be back on Chicago Fire. Given that the finales of most Chicago Fire seasons air between mid-April to late-May, it’s possible that Severide could be out for the rest of season 11.
Kinney is one of Chicago Fire‘s few remaining original cast members. In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter ahead of the series’ season 5 finale in 2019, Kinney looked back on his half-decade on the series. “It’s tough to see the forest through the trees. Maybe over hiatus I can take a good step back and take it all in,” he said. “But to think that we started that long ago, and especially network shows, most of these don’t even see the light of day from the pilot.”
He continued, “So getting that to go, and then getting a pickup for 13 episodes and then you get a little bit of rhythm and then you start airing and then we were finding our sea legs trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t. There’s no guarantees so we didn’t know if we were getting a back-nine pickup. And then we got that. I remember when John Roman, who was our line producer seasons one, two and three, got off the phone and gathered cast and crew and said, ‘You guys, we got picked up for season two,’ and that was one of the prouder moments in my career. It felt like validation that people liked the show and watched it.
Kinney also explained what it was like to see Chicago Fire — which was the first show in the Chicago franchise — expand into Chicago P.D., Chicago Med and Chicago Justice, most of which he’s made appearances as Severide on. “Going forward with these spinoffs, they get a little hectic but I was looking at a poster the other day on our stages and one of them is the entire cast of Fire, P.D. and Med,” he said. “You see it grow little by little but there’s like 50 characters and it says, ‘One Chicago.’ To see that—and now we have Justice—it’s a lot to take in. I’m really proud and humbled.”
Kinney’s leave came came three months after Chicago Fire‘s co-creator and co-showrunner Derek Haas announced he was leaving Wolf Entertainment — which produces the Chicago, FBI and Law & Order franchises — at the end of Chicago Fire season 11. “Although I am leaving Wolf Entertainment next year to focus on creating new shows, I’m entirely committed to delivering amazing episodes of ‘Chicago Fire’ and ‘FBI: International’ through the end of the current seasons,” Haas said in a statement at the time. “I learned everything I know about storytelling, pace, characters, production values, and hiring the best cast, crews, and staffs from Dick Wolf and Peter Jankowski, and as hard as it is to leave a place you love and have called home for over a decade, including incredible support from Universal Television, NBC and CBS, I look forward to building my own brand in entertainment.”
Kinney’s leave also comes a little over a year after Jesse Spencer — who played Captain Matthew Casey on Chicago Fire from seasons 1 to 10 — also left the series in its 200th episode in October 2021. “I added it up, and this year is my 18th year of network TV, straight — I went straight from House into Chicago Fire,” Spencer said on a press call at the time. “Coming up to the 200th, I called [showrunner Derek Haas] and broke him the news that I thought it was time to leave the show. He agreed we should at least get Casey to 200 episodes. “It was a difficult decision because I’ve loved this show from the start, but there’s other things that I would love to do in the future and there’s some family that I need to take care of. 18 years is a long time. That’s a long stretch.” He continued, “It was a difficult decision, and I hate to leave the show because I do love it, but when the time comes, the time comes.”
Spencer’s last episode as a series regular on Chicago Fire was season 10, episode 5 “Two Hundred,” which was also the show’s 200th episode overall. The episode sees Spencer leave Firehouse 51 and move to Oregon after he’s contacted by Griffin Darden, the son of a firefighter killed in Chicago Fire‘s pilot to asks for help for him and his brother. Casey, who had become a father figure to the brothers after their dad’s death, decides to move to Oregon to become the boys’ legal guardian to prevent them from being separated and sent to foster care. The episode also sees Casey and his love interest, paramedic Sylvie Brett (played by Kara Kilmer), agree to try to make their relationship work long distance. “We’ve been establishing this relationship for three years and we finally just got there. Casey’s leaving and going to Oregon for the right reasons,” Spencer said on the press call in 2021. “There is the chance that I will come back. We’re toying with, ‘Will Casey come back?’ … That’s a possibility for me too.”
Chicago Fire airs on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
For more about Severide, check out our photo gallery of Chicago Fire stars and their real-life loves.