Spoilers ahead for the Season 15 premiere of Chicago Fire! It's a doozy so if you aren't caught up, please check it out with your Peacock subscription.
Chicago Fire’s 14th season ended on a major cliffhanger that saw several members of 51 in danger during a call. After months of waiting and speculating about who would live and who would die, Season 15 finally premiered Wednesday on the 2026 TV schedule. While I’m happy that the cliffhanger has already been resolved, I couldn't help but wonder if there was almost another outcome. Luckily, I got to ask the showrunner about it.
It was hard to tell if anyone was going to die as Season 14 ended, with some firefighters trapped in a burning building and others getting engulfed in fire. We knew two things though that made this a big possibility. First, Chicago Fire has a track record of killing characters off. Second, Joe Miñoso was announced to be leaving. Even before the announcement, I already was worried for Cruz and Hermann. Turns out, I was right to worry.
In the Season 15 premiere, “New Blood,” everyone ultimately makes it out OK, until Cruz finds several people trapped in a room. He manages to break through a wall and get most of them out, until there’s a collapse right on top of him. Luckily, he lives, and while he has a broken spine, it’s definitely better than the alternative.
Part of me wonders if the show considered killing Cruz off before filming, though. Given the fact that Miñoso is leaving, could things have gone differently? Chicago Fire’s newest showrunner, Victor Teran, told CinemaBlend they did discuss the "possibility."
That is, I would say, always a possibility that we contemplate. And only because that is the life of being a firefighter. And I think that we thought about it, we weighed it, and we left it open, truly. When we walked away from last season, we left it to this season to figure it out.
As I mentioned, Chicago Fire has had way too many close calls over the years, and one too many cliffhangers that have not gone in the right direction. It's a little unnerving to hear the showrunner casually tell me this one could have gone either way, but apparently "every option was on the table."
And every option was on the table, and every option was seriously considered. In the end, it felt to me like telling this kind of story would give us more to dig into, especially for Joe, specifically the actor. For Cruz, the character, it would give us more to do and more to explore with him, which would be interesting. We would have to move past it fairly quickly if he had died, so we chose to stay with it even though it's difficult.
You can never tell what’s going to happen during a major call like the one at the end of Season 14. It's quick and attracts headlines when shows kill off major characters, so I get the appeal, but it's kind of nice to see a story go in a different direction. In fact, I think this was the right direction to go in. We also had just found out that Chloe’s pregnant with twin girls, so having her raise four kids alone would be pretty harsh.
That said, the aftermath of the call won’t go away so easily, and it’s not just because of Cruz’s rehabilitation. Teran admitted to me they aren’t going to “shy away from what can happen when firefighters are in that situation.” We’ve already seen a little bit of this when it was believed Cruz was responsible for the two deaths in the warehouse (when he actually wasn’t). A call like this can take a toll, physically and mentally, and the show sounds like it will explore that.
Since Season 15 just started, it’s hard to tell how this call will continue impacting everyone, but it’s clear that Cruz is facing the brunt of it. Even though it’s nice that he didn’t die and no one else at 51 died, the fact that he’s physically changed after it is going to be hard for the character, and it’s going to be hard for the fans to watch as the show builds up to his inevitable exit.
