NBC Starts Chicago Fire’s Painful Course-Correction Before It's Too Late
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Chicago Fire's difficult but necessary course-correction has started. Dick Wolf's Windy City-based franchise remains the king of Wednesday nights for NBC. However, while Chicago Med has been doing a good job in recent years, establishing itself as premier medical drama, the franchise's inaugural project has seemingly struggled in terms of storytelling. The issue can be chalked to various factors, but arguably the biggest one is due to its inability to stabilize its ensemble.
In the last few seasons, Chicago Fire said goodbye to multiple veteran cast members, such as Matt Casey, Blake Gallo, Sylvie Brett, Chief Wallace Boden, Sam Carver, and Darren Ritter. Some of them had better send-offs than the others, but regardless of the specifics, the overall impact has been detrimental to the show overall. What made this worse is that it didn't seem like NBC and Wolf Entertainment had a clear plan to mitigate the situation. This resulted in repetitive arcs, twists that didn't make sense, and uneven storytelling in the 2025-2026 TV cycle.
Chicago Fire Is Shrinking Its Cast For Season 15
Ahead of NBC's fall 2026 premieres, Chicago Fire is facing a couple of more big departures. Both original cast member Joe Mińoso's Joe Cruz and Chief Boden's replacement, Dermot Mulroney's Dom Pascal are officially leaving Firehouse 51. This continues last cycle's trend, where the year opened with the exits of Jake Lockett's Carver and Daniel Kyri's Ritter, although, obviously, the circumstances are different. No official reason has been given for the pair's exit, and it's still unclear how they will be written out, but based on the responses to the announcements, it's clear that they weren't the actors' decisions.
It's no secret that budget cuts have impacted the network TV space in general. The impact on One Chicago, however, has, arguably, been the most obvious. For a few seasons now, some characters would miss several episodes, as series regulars' mandatory episode count were decreased. Admittedly, some absences were better-executed than others, but it obviously impacted the kind of narratives that Chicago Fire wanted to tackle, especially multi-episode narratives.
Why A Smaller Cast Allows Chicago Fire To Reclaim Its Former Glory
Losing Pascal and Cruz will be very difficult. Mińoso has been a staple of One Chicago since it kicked off in 2012. Meanwhile, Mulroney may have only been in Chicago Fire for a couple of seasons, but he did an incredible job endearing his character to Firehouse 51 and the viewers, even though the work was cut out for him as Eammon Walker's replacement. If NBC and Wolf Entertainment handle their respective exits properly, and they are able to stabilize the ensemble, the procedural could be on its path to reclaim its old glory.
With a smaller cast, Chicago Fire season 15 would be able to afford to keep the whole cast for the whole season. This means that it would be able to maintain continuity better, preventing truncated storyline and unnecessary drama to explain sudden character absences — something that Taylor Kinney's Kelly Severide and Miranda Rae Mayo's Stella Kidd have been subjected to one too many times. Individual and collective character developments would also be easier to execute.
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Chicago Fire
- Release Date
- October 10, 2012
- Network
- NBC
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Taylor Kinney
Kelly Severide
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David Eigenberg
Christopher Herrmann
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