Things are boiling under the surface for Stella and Kelly
The giant midseason cliffhanger for Chicago Fire and the bigger questions coming out of the first half of the season all involve the show’s main couple, Stellaride. The twosome of Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) have had a bumpy Season 14 so far. First, the two found out in the opening scene of the season that Stella had suffered a miscarriage, after Season 13 ended with the news that they were surprisingly pregnant.
And then, they were thrown another curveball in the form of Isaiah (Hero Hunter), a foster kid they took in after their journey to adopt fell through last season. And throughout this all, the two have yet to actually sit down and deal with the loss they suffered.
Meanwhile, Severide has been forced to step up at Firehouse 51 as Chief Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) deals with the bureaucratic side of being Chief. And, at midseason, we saw him and Tom Van Meter (Tim Hopper), the Office of Fire Investigation Captain, caught in the middle of a fire with seemingly no way to escape. All while Stella is out of town, helping Isaiah get better medical care for his mom in Cleveland.
Will Severide survive? What will Stella’s reaction to her husband’s brush with death be? Will this be the catalyst the two need to discuss the elephant in the room and address what the family they want looks like going forward? And once the dust settles on the budget cuts the show has promised, who will be left at Firehouse 51?
Chicago Fire EP Reza Tabrizi broke down the big Stellaride decision and that cliffhanger, detailed what we can expect to see of the couple next, and even gave us a little tease of what’s coming for Lizzie Novak’s romance with Chicago Med’s own Dr. Frost below:
There’s been a lot of anger over Stella’s miscarriage. Why did she lose the baby? Was the decision ultimately a logistics one? Or was it about exploring the different ways a family can be built?
Reza Tabrizi: It wasn’t logistics. A female firefighter being pregnant definitely brings its own challenges, which we talked about. And it could have been… it could be very interesting to also explore. But what we wanted to show a little bit is that it’s not necessarily… it was a bit of an unplanned thing that happened, right? And it seems like at the end of last season, Stella got really excited about it.
She wasn’t really for it at the beginning of last season or the middle of last season, but once the pregnancy news came up, she was fully on board and excited. And there’s the tragedy of how often this happens with couples. Again, there’s an element of, as soon as there’s a win, the hammer drops, which is real for all of us in life, as soon as we have a moment of success. We are faced with the difficulties of what that success brought and challenges that we didn’t expect to be dealing with.
And obviously, the love of being a caring parent is continued in the storyline with being faced with having to foster Isaiah and the fact that, all of a sudden, as much as Severide wanted his own baby, he ended up being very close with Isaiah. And obviously, with the last episode, Stella was still in Cleveland with Isaiah to visit Isaiah’s mom, and of course, we’re going to have reasons for her to have to come back.
You put Severide in danger! Poor woman can’t leave her husband out of her sight, or he ends up in mortal peril!
Tabrizi: Yeah, she can’t leave him. [laughs]. Yeah, that element of it is, you know, having one of our own be in danger is always cool. And without the tools that they normally have.
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It felt like someone had to be in danger at midseason. If it was someone’s turn, though, it probably wasn’t Severide’s. Though we could argue on this show, it’s kind of always Severide’s turn.
Tabrizi: Yeah, he’s used to getting himself into these situations where all of a sudden he has to MacGyver his way out of it. And, in this case, obviously, he’s also in there with someone who’s not a firefighter and doesn’t have the resources and the tools or the know-how of it, and someone who used to be a firefighter, like Severide.
And, as Severide and Van Meter have gotten closer over the years, and especially after Benny died… and with Boden’s exit, Van Meter has become a bit of that father figure. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that unfolds.
You talked about Severide’s relationship with Isaiah and what Stella was looking for in a family, but it feels like bringing in Isaiah is a temporary fix for the problem, isn’t it? Kelly and Stella didn’t really talk about the miscarriage past the superficial “we’re really sad this happened” conversation. Is there a deeper storyline there about Stella coming to terms with how much she really wanted a baby that we haven’t yet fully touched on?
Tabrizi: Well, there is time. That’s why you should tune in. I mean, it’ll definitely… when tragic things happen, at times we try to deal with it right away. And at times, we, especially when there’s a distraction like Isaiah, it ends up being put away. But keep watching. It’s coming.
And while all of this is happening, we’ve also seen Kelly Severide step into a leadership position he’s said multiple times he doesn’t want. How are you building the character up to being this leader that he refused to be for so long?
Tabrizi: That’s happened to me before, right? Didn’t want something in life, and here it is. That’s another interesting thing in life, in my opinion, when we end up in places that we are good at, not necessarily because we wanted to be there. But situations work out for us to end up in positions that we can handle, and we are good at, even if we didn’t expect it.
I think [Severide has] always had a leadership type personality, but a much more quiet type of leader, and he’s always led by example. But there is definitely a bigger element now of more of the firehouse relying on him as the guy who has been there for a long time, and has been one of the leaders to have to step up and care for the family, as Boden did, and like Pascal has been doing.
What can you tease about the Lizzie Novak and Dr. Frost romance? It’s fun to see Chicago Med and Chicago Fire share characters like this, and the two have so much chemistry. But how sustainable is it?
Tabrizi: Yeah, the two of them coming together and being interested in each other has been really nice between the two shows. And when Darren [Barnet], who plays Dr. Frost, comes to our world, we’re always excited to have him.
And this storyline is going to carry on for a bit; there’s obviously going to be twists and turns as we always expect with the shows, but there are definitely elements that will come to the surface, and we will be exploring that.
