The last NBC One Chicago Wednesday of a TV season is guaranteed to deliver some major twists, and that certainly will be true in the spring 2025 TV schedule on May 21. Chicago Med has a pregnancy bombshell to follow up on, Chicago Fire's Battalion Chief was arrested ahead of the finale, and Chicago P.D.'s Intelligence Unit was disbanded in the penultimate episode of Season 12. And those are just some of the twists that will have to be untwisted over the course of the finales!
Luckily, I was able to speak with the showrunners for Med Season 10, Fire Season 13, and P.D. Season 12 about the last episodes. of the season, and my biggest takeaway is honestly that I'm glad all three shows have been renewed for next season. Let's start with the same show that One Chicago Wednesdays kick off with: Med.
Chicago Med – "... Don't You Cry"
The penultimate episode of Season 10, which is available streaming now with a Peacock subscription, guarantees that the doctors are in for trouble with the desperate parents of some patients. In addition to hyping the scare that will result in a "powerhouse" performance from Oliver Platt, showrunner Allen MacDonald told CinemaBlend:
I’d say the stakes are very high. Walter [Sam Trammell] — the dad with the gun — feels deeply betrayed and desperate: he played by the transplant rules for year… he got on the waiting list and waited for his turn while his son Noah’s condition deteriorated… and now at the eleventh hour Griffin [Tim DeKay] essentially steals the lungs right out from under Noah for his own daughter Alea [Brooklyn Shuck]. Griffin’s power and money allows him to cut the line and I think Walter hits his limit when confronted with the unfairness of that. I think nothing guts a parent more than feeling powerless to protect their own child… and I think for Walter that escalates into pure rage.
There's a glimpse of that "pure rage" in the preview for the Season 10 finale, which indicates that Dr. Frost may be the one to intervene before a messy situation gets bloody at Gaffney. For her part, Hannah has an entirely different conundrum for the episode, as she learned last week that she was pregnant. I'd originally assumed that Ripley had to be the father as her most recent ex (that we know of), but the showrunner was somewhat coy when he previewed how she handles her pregnancy in the finale:
Hannah’s central dilemma in the finale is that she’s ‘carrying’ the secret that she’s pregnant all alone and isn’t quite sure who to turn to.
Will Hannah turn to somebody before the credits roll on Season 10, or will we be waiting until Season 11 – when the bun in the oven could already be well on the way to rising – for any answers? Find out with the Season 10 finale of Chicago Med on May 21 at 8 p.m. ET on NBC.
And that brings us to...
Chicago Fire – "It Had To End This Way"
Chicago Fire's very first season without Eamonn Walker's Wallace Boden as full-time Chief of Firehouse 51 has been rocky for the first responders, including Dermot Mulroney's Dom Pascal as Boden's replacement. Showrunner Andrea Newman teased that Severide will be wrapped up in Pascal's storyline in the Season 13 finale and even previewed the exits of Jake Lockett and Daniel Kyri. That doesn't mean all loose ends will be tied off by the end of "It Had To End This Way," though. Newman told me:
There are always questions to be answered, even when there are seemingly answers. It's what the hell comes next? How the hell is that going to happen? Are they going to manage that? How are they going to go on when that's happening? There will be questions. There'll be surprises, and there'll be answers that just ask more questions at the end of the day too. [laughs]
The finale is also set to cover Herrmann preparing to finale take the Chief exam that could elevate him to the role that Boden envisioned for him in the Season 12 finale, as well as Stella being involved in Natalie's relationship with her sister. So, does the Chicago Fire team already have answers planned out for all the leftover questions at the end of Season 13? The showrunner explained:
When we play on the finale, we always know what the B sides of those things will be. But sometimes they take on lives of their own and go in directions we don't expect. The actors sometimes click with stuff so beautifully that you're like, 'Oh god, we got to lean into this for a while.' We get surprised too. We watch dailies or are on set and see something that is popping and didn't expect that, or see the reverse. Like, 'Oh, that didn't work. We're not doing that anymore.' So that's what's so fun about network TV. You get to be there on set ten minutes after you wrote it, it feels like, and see what's working and what's not. And play with it as you go.
It remains to be seen who will be sitting in the Chief's office at 51 at the end of the episode, as well as whether Natalie's place with Stellaride will become more permanent. The Season 13 finale airs on May 21 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
And what would a One Chicago finale night be without concluding on some crime action?
Chicago P.D. – "Vows"
In the wake of Deputy Chief Reid making good on his threat to arrest Torres, strip Burgess of her badge, and shut down Voight's unit, Intelligence was disbanded at the end of the second-to-last episode of Season 12. In addition to describing Voight's "mortality" in the finale, showrunner Gwen Sigan ran down which characters are in the most trouble with Reid openly targeting the team:
Oh, man, they're all in so much trouble. [laughs] I think Torres is probably in the most trouble, as far as he could just be in prison, so he's in a lot of trouble. But honestly, they could all go to prison, depending on how much evidence there is and what kind of charges could be filed against them. So they're all in a lot of trouble. Voight, to me, is the one that's probably in the most emotional trouble, just because it's his unit. We've never seen him get this close to losing his unit, and obviously we know what it means to him. So what sort of places is he willing to go in order to to try to prevent this? I think [that] is a question that's in the ether right now for the finale.
In light of the whole team being in "so much trouble," fans can take heart in the fact that NBC confirmed Burgess and Ruzek will in fact tie the knot before the finale even aired! And they even look happy, which is hardly a guarantee for the main characters in a Chicago P.D. finale.
Burzek are clearly having a more traditional wedding than when Upton and Halstead eloped at a courthouse, so hopefully that means a happier marriage for Burgess and Ruzek than what Upstead got. According to Gwen Sigan, fans at least don't need to expect a disaster interrupting the nuptials. She shared:
They should expect a very happy wedding for the two of them. I think that Burgess and Ruzek have exactly what they wanted in this wedding, but I do think it is still a Chicago P.D. episode, and you will still see a lot of cost, and you will still see a lot of consequence, and some of that cost happens at the wedding. It's a mix. It's true Chicago P.D., where you get a lot of happiness, and then you also get get some dark as well. [laughs] Not a fairy tale.
If there's one thing that Chicago P.D. fans can agree on, I hope it's that Burzek deserve to catch a break! Find out how it all goes down (and what goes wrong for there to be a "cost") with the Season 12 finale on May 21 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC.
All things considered, the One Chicago showrunners previewed some very eventful endings to the current season, so fans may want to revisit the episodes once they're available streaming next day on Peacock. The trio will also return to NBC in the fall for the usual One Chicago Wednesday lineup.
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