Only a few episodes of Chicago Fire are left in the spring of the 2024 TV schedule, but it’s safe to say that Season 12 is going out with more of a bang than a whimper, starting with the newest installment on May 8. Severide will go on the ride of his life when Truck 81 is stolen with him on board, and the result is what showrunner Andrea Newman described to CinemaBlend as “Severide’s Die Hard episode.”
Called “Inside Man,” the episode will also be the 250th of Chicago Fire, which is a milestone that not many network TV shows ever hit. After the promo that confirmed a new kind of danger for Severide and a secret possibly coming out for Ritter, I took the chance to ask Andrea Newman why now is the right time for this action-packed episode and how Taylor Kinney reacted to it. The showrunner shared:
He’s amazing and he was so ready to go. The character has been kind of behind the desk for a couple episodes and dealing with being the ranking officer at the house and sort of household duties, and he was ready to explode as a character and as an actor too. [laughs] It was time to give him some big action, and we kept calling it Severide’s Die Hard episode. Our writer, Matt Whitney, who’s an EP and a phenomenal writer, came up with just this really cool setup for him that’s based on a real story and it just took off from there and it’s just nonstop. It’s a really exciting and fun episode, and a great chance to see Severide go full Severide.
The leader of Squad 3 naturally hasn’t particularly enjoyed the desk work that usually belongs to Boden, which raises some interesting questions with Eamonn Walker set to depart Fire as a series regular. A comparison to Die Hard – which ranks on CinemaBlend’s list of the best action movies – can only mean good things when it comes to action. I noted to the showrunner that if anybody could pull off the One Chicago version of Die Hard, Severide seemed like the natural pick. She responded:
Right? You can picture the ripped t-shirt and everything.
The situation looks serious enough in the promo that I’m not expecting Severide to be dropping Bruce Willis lines from the Die Hard franchise, but Taylor Kinney has spent the better part of the show’s 250 episodes proving that he’s a veritable small screen action hero. When asked if the Chicago Fire team deliberately wanted to go big for the 250th episode even though the milestone isn’t being hyped, Andrea Newman said:
That’s right! We did want [that]. It’s funny, our consultant and former Deputy Commissioner for the CFD Steve Chikerotis counts every episode, so at every production meeting, he’ll say the number and congratulations to everybody. He’s the best and he’s always following it, and so when he said ‘Coming up is 250 this season,’ we were like ‘250?!’ And we knew we had to do something special for that. Of course, and I say something to a Wolf exec about, ‘Can you believe it? 250!’ And they’re like, ‘Well, Law & Order is at 590…’ [laughs] They didn’t care, but we were super excited about 250 and really proud and wanted to do something big and fun.
The timing is actually pretty funny – of the projects in the nine-show Dick Wolf TV universe, Law & Order hits 500 episodes this week and Law & Order: SVU hits 550 in its milestone 25th season just one day after Episode 250 of Chicago Fire. Still, the milestone is definitely worth celebrating, as the founding One Chicago show has gone through a lot ever since the 200th episode said goodbye to Jesse Spencer as a series regular back in 2021. Severide will be in the spotlight this time around, and the wait to see what goes down is nearly over. For now, check out the promo for the “Inside Man” episode:
Be sure to tune in to NBC tonight at 9 p.m. ET for the “Inside Man” installment of Chicago Fire, between Chicago Med at 8 p.m. ET and Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. ET. The finales for all three shows will air on May 22, so now isn’t the time to miss an episode. You can also revisit earlier episodes streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription now.