What To Know
- The Chicago Fire fall finale ends with a major cliffhanger involving Severide and Van Meter.
- Pascal’s budding romance with Annette faces complications when she reveals a decision that will affect 51.
- The episode also explores personal storylines for Vasquez and Novak involving their families.
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Chicago Fire Season 14 Episode 7 “Pierce the Vein.”]
Is Firehouse 51 about to be called to a scene to save one of its own? It certainly looks like that way with the end of the Chicago Fire fall finale.
Meanwhile, Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) may be moving on with the mayor’s chief of staff, Annette (Annabeth Gish) following his wife’s death last season, Vasquez (Brandon Larracuente) gets shocking news about his father, and Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) tries to fix her and her sister’s relationship.
The winter finale also gives us an update on Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo), who is in Cleveland helping her and Severide’s foster son with his mother, who is now at a clinic that can help her after a car accident. That’s going well, and the hope is Kidd isn’t gone longer than the two weeks of furlough she has.
Read on for the highlights of the Chicago Fire fall finale.
Severide & Van Meter’s Major Cliffhanger
The firehouse is called to the scene of a fire at a school over a weekend, and it soon becomes clear that it’s arson and the person responsible was targeting the principal. Severide (Taylor Kinney) spots a student, Wyatt, outside, and the principal shares that he’s had to suspend him recently. Wyatt’s father refuses to let Severide and Van Meter (Tim Hopper) talk to his son without a warrant, but it turns out that the teen has an alibi: The arsonist started the fire remotely, since the coffee maker used had a smart plug, and the kid was nowhere near the location tracked to.
When Severide and Van Meter try to talk to Wyatt again, he reveals that there’s a private Facebook group for those who hate the principal — with 83 members and therefore suspects. Severide and Van Meter go to see the principal, and the episode ends with them up in his apartment — and someone setting a fire in the stairwell. Uh-oh!
Will Pascal’s New Romance With Annette End Before It Starts?
Annette cancels coffee with Pascal with the teachers’ union threatening to strike, and she ends up stopping by 51 with lunch. She talks about how she got hooked on politics and shares her current stress: They’re trying to avoid schools shutting down, but wherever they find money, someone else will be pissed at them. Pascal suggests taking it from items further down the priority list, to not fix the fence before the roof, as his grandfather said. Then he’s called to another house for a minor injury on the job.
Meanwhile, Mouch (Christian Stolte) comes up with a universal compartment protocol; with rig rotations and shuffling from house to house, he thinks a department-wide standard for compartment organization would be best. He pitches it to Pascal, and while he’s not against it, it’s not the time; to get it on the higher-ups’ radar, it needs to translate into profits.
Annette texts Pascal when she’s able to avert the strike, and he invites her for dinner — at his place. But over the meal, she reveals that to get the money to avoid that strike, she had to pull from various places including the CFD — and she asked the department for a list of rigs to be permanently decommissioned. One is Engine 51, Mouch’s.
Vasquez’s Shocking Reunion
Vasquez is shocked when his dad shows up at 51 for his car — all he’d known was his parole hearing had arrived. Violet (Hanako Greensmith), with whom Vasquez spent the shift working in the ambulance as part of the PIC’s new program, gives him a ride home and suggests he stop by Molly’s to wash the day off that night.
Peter Gordon/NBC
He takes her up on that, and Violet actually stays longer than she’d planned once he walks into the bar. Then, when Molly’s is closing, Vasquez isn’t ready for the night to end and suggests they head elsewhere. She agrees. There’s not a new romance brewing there, right?
Novak’s Family Drama
Novak is getting ready for a day off, with no plans except sitting in front of the TV, when she receives a call that her sister is in the hospital. It’s not a big deal, Heidi insists, she’s just dehydrated. She passed out at a bus stop because she mixed a sleeping pill with grapefruit juice, which is apparently a bad idea. She swears she didn’t do it on purpose, that she’d never and she’s not their mother.
When Novak drives Heidi home, her sister remarks that she’ll see her in another six months. Novak points out that Heidi hasn’t reached out either. Neither of them have talked to their brother recently. Heidi says she’s tired of pretending they have a normal sibling relationship since they haven’t acted like siblings in a long time, and she gets out of the car.
Novak then opens up to Violet about her family. Yes, it was messier to have a big family, but it was the good kind, she says. After her mom, however, everything fell apart. She took it upon herself to do things like making lunches and signing homework, but no one had asked her to, which didn’t sit right with her siblings. She then goes to see her sister again, to hang out like siblings do, and Heidi lets her in. They even have the same taste in TV.
What did you think of the Chicago Fire fall finale? What do you think will happen to Severide and Van Meter and to engine 51? Let us know in the comments section below.
Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC
