Chicago Fire’s New Boss Is Putting The Heat On Severide, But I’m Just Glad Stella Is Finally Catching A Break

Warning: spoilers are ahead for Episode 17 of Chicago Fire Season 14 in the 2026 TV schedule, called “Sway” and available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.

Chicago Fire was missing some characters again in the latest episode of Season 14, but the only one that was really a problem was Severide. Per Stella, he was going to be out for a couple of weeks for more Captain training just after acing the exam. Him not being present doesn’t mean that he was out of Chief Hopkins’ crosshairs, and ”Sway” ended with the reveal of how he’s going after Benny Severide’s son. It doesn’t bode well for Kelly, but I do see an upside of Hopkins replacing Pascal, and that’s in the treatment of the Truck 81 lieutenant.

How Chief Hopkins Is Going After Severide

With Severide absent, Hopkins spent the episode getting to see the rest of Firehouse 51 in action, and he was clearly impressed with how Stella ran 81 despite initially greeting her as “Lieutenant Severide’s wife.” He even gave her the go-ahead to play fire cop and investigate a recent inferno, paying attention when she credited Severide for teaching her everything she knows about fire investigation.

Unfortunately, if she thought that her praise of her husband to Hopkins would make him think better of her husband, it seems to have backfired. He did some digging and discovered that Severide had a long history of working with OFI, which didn’t exactly help Hopkins believe that the apple had fallen far from the tree with Kelly as Benny Severide’s kid.

The episode ended on the reveal that Hopkins isn’t wasting any time in going after Severide through official channels, even with the Squad 3 lieutenant absent. He directed Lucy to take some paperwork to be filed with the CFD’s Internal Affairs Bureau:

Hopkins wants Severide to be investigated for “DERELICTION OF DUTY,” presumably tied to Severide taking so much time to work with OFI while still serving as lieutenant of Squad. It would be a reasonable concern… if Hopkins didn’t immediately go scorched earth by filing paperwork with Internal Affairs instead of doing some more digging himself.

If the concern stemmed from Hopkins just not knowing Severide well enough yet to see how he can handle Squad and OFI work, that’d be one thing. It’s a whole other thing after Hopkins declared his vendetta against what he sees as the nepotism that got Kelly where he is.

And that’s of course very bad for Severide and pretty juicy for fans heading into the final episodes of Season 14, but I’m honestly just relieved that Stella isn’t getting the short end of the CFD stick… again. For now.

Stella Is Finally Catching A Break (Sort Of)

For much of his time on Chicago Fire until shortly after the death-defying One Chicago crossover, Pascal was being significantly harder on Stella as the lieutenant of Truck than he was on Severide on Squad or Herrmann/Mouch on Engine. There was no clear cause for it, or what seemed to be clear favoritism towards Severide, and it was pretty infuriating for me to watch as somebody who really wanted to like Dermot Mulroney’s character.

Yes, his final episode did establish that he was particularly hard on her because she reminds him of himself, but I’m still not convinced that that was enough to justify how he treated her. She didn’t know why he was doing what he was doing, so it just seemed incredibly unfair, and Chicago Fire not revealing that to viewers earlier meant that we didn’t really have a reason to give him the benefit of the doubt. Pascal went out on a high note after his heroics in the crossover, but I'll never feel good about how he treated Stella.

Is Hopkins clearly bad news for 51? Of course. Was I ready to spend the full hour being annoyed at him on her behalf when he referred to the Lieutenant Stella Kidd as “Lieutenant Severide’s wife” upon meeting her? 100%. But dang it, I really enjoyed seeing a chief watching Stella in action, seeing how capable she is, and giving her the hard-earned respect that she deserves.

Honestly, if he didn’t have a twisted vendetta against her husband, I’d be pretty happy with seeing how he approached getting to know Stella and how she operates in action. I’m not confident that the respect will last if/when he sees how ride or die she is for Severide, but what can I say? After her long journey to become a CFD officer, I like seeing Stella get her due, and Hopkins is more interesting for not being rotten to the core.

Unfortunately, Chicago Fire is now going on a brief break, not too long after being renewed for Season 15. You can plan on seeing the Firehouse 51 crew back in action on Wednesday, April 22 at 9 p.m. ET as usual, between Chicago Med at 8 p.m. ET (with Dr. Charles alive despite the EP giving fans reasons to be afraid) and Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. ET, all on NBC. You can also revisit earlier episodes on Peacock.