Chicago Fire kicks off its new season with devastating news for Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Severide (Taylor Kinney) in the Wednesday,

October 1, premiere, only to end it with a surprising development. It also sets up Ritter’s (Daniel Kyri) exit and introduces 51’s newest firefighter, Vasquez (Brandon Larracuente).

 

 

At the beginning of the premiere, Kidd and Severide learn she lost the baby, but they’re surprised to, at the end of it, find their social worker, Terry (Joe Daru), waiting outside 51 to tell them of a teen being removed from a group home with nowhere to go. Meanwhile, Ritter finds out his ex-boyfriend Dwayne (Samuel B. Jackson) was shot on the job in New York — they’ve stayed in touch — and rushes to his hospital bedside. And Truck’s newest member, Vasquez, rubs Kidd the wrong way (like acting without waiting for orders), but Pascal

 

 

(Dermot Mulroney) tells her he’s not going anywhere. Plus, Mouch (Christian Stolte) is now a lieutenant, but Herrmann (David Eigenberg) reluctantly only agrees to share his office. The premiere also explains Carter (Jake Lockett) and Damon’s (Michael Bradway) absences: The former did leave, and he and Violet (Hanako Greensmith) are giving each other space to move on, while the latter transferred.

Speaking of losses, the good news is Dwayne is alive, but we do know that Ritter is leaving. So is that playing into his exit? And because Mouch just talked about how he gets to know people and then they leave, how is he going to be dealing with Ritter leaving?

Stolte: Yeah, I thought about that. I thought about how that statement comes before Mouch even knows he’s going to lose Ritter, too.

Newman: That’s a very special relationship, the Mouch [and] Ritter relationship. We really just almost dance around it a little bit in this first episode, but these guys are really tight. I mean, obviously, Mouch pulled Ritter off the banister. That kid was not going to be a firefighter if it hadn’t been for Mouch. There is no doubt that Ritter had lost all confidence; he had lost all sense of purpose in terms of firefighting, and Mouch brought him back to a place where he could be the best firefighter he could be and see himself in a whole new light as a firefighter. And to me, that foreshadowed so many things about Mouch as a leader that we then get to see come up on their feet as we go forward. And obviously from here forward, too.

But for Ritter, there’s been a real pattern of him struggling to find love and then realizing maybe he had it all along. And obviously, that echoes what Violet went through with Carver. So, she’s seeing him go through this and wavering a little bit, do I jump? Do I hang back? What do I do? And she’s like, “You better go and go now, because I had a window with Carver where there was a moment,” and the moment interestingly was not last season. The moment was that finale of the season before, where Carver was open and saying, “Let’s be together.” And she pushed him away, and then he went to Texas and spiraled, and that’s where it went. So, she is calling that moment back for Ritter and saying, “I had a moment, and now’s your moment with Dwayne, so take it, learn from my mistakes, and take that moment.” And so it’s a payoff for both the Mouch relationship with Ritter, the Violet relationship with Ritter, and all of 51 because they want what’s best for him, and they want to see him happy out in the world.

Can you say when his last episode is?

Newman: He’s there at the beginning of the season, and we hope to see him back at some point later in the season. This is what we do on Chicago Fire. We’ll say our goodbyes, and then we’ll see people again. And he’s certainly very much still in the lives of all of us.