CHICAGO FIRE: Andrea Newman on Severide’s Fight to Save Pascal, Kidd’s Bond with Natalie, Carver and Violet’s Reunion, and a ‘Crazy’ Finale Call

May 19, 2025 by Marisa Roffman

CHICAGO FIRE — “It Had To End This Way” Episode 13022 — Pictured: (l-r) — (Photo by: Peter Gordon/NBC)

CHICAGO FIRE’s Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) has to fight for his job—and his freedom—on the Wednesday, May 21 season finale, as the chief is suspected of causing a crash to harm the man who caused Monica’s (KaDee Strickland) death.

But thankfully for Pascal, he won’t be alone. “At the end of the day, it’s really Severide who’s fighting for Pascal, and Severide who has decided to go all in, even though he’s got a nagging feeling like, ‘Is this really the best idea, and is there a chance that Pascal did this and I’m going to the mat?’” CHICAGO FIRE showrunner Andrea Newman tells Give Me My Remote in the video below. “And so he’s really tying his fate to Pascal: If Pascal goes down, Severide is going down with him—and Severide knows that. So that’s the drama and the stakes of going into the finale.”

As Severide (Taylor Kinney) is trying to save Firehouse 51’s boss, Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) is trying to take care of Natalie (Ava Torres), the teen she reunited with years after saving her from a fire.

“I think the experience she’s having right now with Natalie is very close to her heart,” Newman notes. “She basically has done this with a lot of the Girls on Fire attendees. She did it with Kylie[, too.] She’s got a soft spot and a real passion for these teenage girls who are trying to find themselves, because that was her back in the day. She has a real connection to that feeling.”

“And with Natalie, it feels there’s something even more than that,” she continues. “They have a shared history that bonds them even closer. And so she wants to do everything she can for Natalie, and that’s not so easy; she’s finding that there’s a lot of obstacles to that. So that’s going into the finale. It’s going to be about, ‘Can she help this girl?’ And what that takes, what it means to her, to Kidd.”

Even more complicated is the impending return of Carver (Jake Lockett), and his reunion with Violet (Hanako Greensmith)…especially now that Violet acknowledged to Flynn (Steven Strait), mid-breakup, that she’s in love with Carver. And there’s also the real-life knowledge that Lockett is exiting as a series regular when the season concludes.

“We saw a little bit of [what’s to come] in the storyline where there was the fake paramedic, and they were kind of circling each other a little bit, and Violet asked [Carver] out for coffee, and he said, ‘No, I’ve got to go to a meeting,’” Newman previews. “And [it] kind of set her straight, ‘Okay, he’s keeping a safe distance.’ But as that’s happening and she’s trying [to move on], she can’t help but feel all this, like, passion and love that she’s been burying come up. And clearly it comes up and knocks the Flynn relationship out.”

“And poor Flynn,” she continues. “I think that [relationship] was very real, because I think she had a lot of fun with Flynn. And that was a very healthy relationship for a while. It was not angst and, you know, pain, like it had been after Hawkins. And even with Carver, because the feelings were so strong. So it had its place in her life. But when it came time, she spoke the truth, and she said, ‘I’m in love with someone else.’”

Now, “we know going into the finale that she’s in love with him [and there’s] the letter [she wrote to Carver], never sent it,” Newman teases. “And he doesn’t know. He’s coming back in a very delicate [way,] walking a tightrope, trying to recover. So it’s messy. And how it’s gonna shake out, we’ll have to see.”

CHICAGO FIRE — “It Had To End This Way” Episode 13022 — Pictured: (l-r) — (Photo by: Peter Gordon/NBC)

And it wouldn’t exactly be CHICAGO FIRE without a massive call in the season finale, too.

“Yeah, that’s a crazy call,” Newman says with a smile. “And as we often do, we watch videos of real [events] that have happened, and the risks involved in this particular call—there’s all these explosives inside. The stakes go up and up, because it’s the deeper you go…and you know our 51 guys, they’re gonna put themselves on the line. If they hear somebody’s inside, they’re going; whether or not they should, they do.”

And filming the sequence was also an adventure, too. “We have this incredible special effects guy who does our real fire that we see on the show—we do not do CGI fires. We do live fires, which is crazy,” Newman says. “John Milinac, our special effects guy, lit so many fires that when I saw them shooting this live, it looked bigger and scarier than the one that we had been using as our base video to shoot off of. And I was like, ‘Is everybody gonna make it out of this thing?’ So it was alarming to watch, but everybody gives it their all for those spectacular ones. And it looks fantastic.”

CHICAGO FIRE, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC

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CHICAGO FIRE: Andrea Newman on Severide’s Fight to Save Pascal, Kidd’s Bond with Natalie, Carver and Violet’s Reunion, and a ‘Crazy’ Finale Call

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