CHICAGO FIRE Boss Derek Haas on the New Leader of Truck 81 and When Casey Might Return

With CHICAGO FIRE’s Casey (Jesse Spencer) departing Chicago, the question of who will take his place on Truck 81 looms over Firehouse 51 in the coming weeks.

“Casey, from Oregon,” Spencer joked to reporters in the video below.

“Casey’s going to do it from FaceTime,” CHICAGO FIRE boss Derek Haas joked back. “[We’ll have] an iPad in the truck.”

But, in all seriousness, “We’re doing a major storyline over who’s going to be…the [new] commanding officer of Truck 81,” Haas said. “So, I don’t want to spoil anything, but that becomes a storyline…through the winter break. Because obviously there [are] some shifting chairs, within the firehouse.”

And with Stella (Miranda Rae Mayo), out of town for Girls on Fire, “that becomes a story going forward, because the spot on Truck 81 is potentially open, and she hasn’t come back to claim it as of the next episode,” Haas previewed. “So that has its own issues and ramifications.”

However, a familiar face has returned: “We were glad to bring Boden back in the 200th, because if Jesse is leaving, it felt like we needed somebody there to keep it from being so untethered,” Haas said. “So as we were mapping all of these moves out, one of them was having Boden come back.”

Despite the big change, the writers intentionally opted to make Casey’s exit as drama-free as possible.

“Part of conceiving the storyline was to make it to where everyone understood why he was doing what he was doing, so that you didn’t have to have this sort of haunted presence,” Haas said. “The Gallo [scene], I thought was a really nice moment, going back to the inception of his character, which was obviously Casey’s his big mentor, so at first you think, ‘Oh man, is he going to be pissed at Casey.’ And then it’s like, ‘No, no. A firefighter changed my life when I was that age, and I’m behind you.'”

“So we’re going to see some after-effects [of his exit] with Brett; it’s going to be hard on Brett going into a long distance relationship and not knowing what the rules are…that will be a big part of what’s going on,” Haas continued. “We have Severide obviously looking at Casey’s quarters, going by, in the next episode; what that means to him. And then we’ll play around with everyone’s reactions to that. And obviously the [new leader of] Truck 81 is the big storyline going forward—who’s going to be in command there?”

But, as the duo indicated, the hope is still that Spencer’s exit is just goodbye for now…especially with a certain on-screen wedding coming up.

“I never try to predict what’s going to happen, production-wise, but we’re in the camp of whenever Jesse wants to come do an episode with us, we will move mountains and Earth to make that happen,” Haas said. “So we’ve been talking; we’ve got some ideas of what that would be. And I’d say you hit the nail on the head on what some of those moments might be.”

CHICAGO FIRE, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC

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