Derek Haas talks Chicago Fire season 6 so far, and what’s next

Chicago Fire showrunner Derek Haas spoke to One Chicago Center about what’s coming in Chicago Fire season 6, and what went into the season’s big decisions.

Tonight is the return of Chicago Fire, and there are a lot of questions that need answers. Have we seen the last of Ramon Dawson? What new challenges will Firehouse 51 face next? Where is the season going?

One Chicago Center sat down with Chicago Fire executive producer and showrunner Derek Haas to ask what we can expect from the second part of the season, as well as the thought process that’s gone into certain developments—like why no one died in that opening cliffhanger.

But before we get into what’s ahead, what stood out to Derek about the first six episodes?

“I think the standouts for me were Eloise Mumford as Hope,” he told us. “I thought that character was really fun to write and kind of defined the first 6 episodes because she kind of had her finger in a lot of the firehouse pies, in terms of stirring things up, with Kidd especially.

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“The Severide relationship with Casey getting bumped up to Captain. We set that up for a couple episodes and then it happened, and it caused some conflict. I think that’s something that will flare up every now and then.”

When Chicago Fire returns, the first episode will deal with whether or not Ramon (guest star Daniel Zacapa) survives. “Our thing is to primarily focus on [the Ramon story] in the first episode,” he explained. “There will be a cost emotionally from the events that occur in the first episode back.”

But after that, the series has just four more episodes to air before the season is preempted once again as NBC begins covering the Winter Olympics. Just like he had a plan in place to work the show around Thursday Night Football, Derek told us that there’s a way these episodes are crafted to handle the Olympic break.

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“We introduce a new character pretty soon off,” he told us. “It’s a teenage girl who is in a really dire situation with her family and Dawson is going to end up emotionally invested in this girl, similar to the way she got invested with Louie.

“Casey’s going to be wary because of what happened with her and Louie. Severide’s going to come at it from a different angle, because he was there when this girl needed help.

“So you’re setting up this sort of five-episode storyline, with a teenage girl who is emotionally bare and needs help,” he added. “The way the firehouse reacts to it is kind of the driving force in this next round.”

In addition to Dawson becoming personally involved with the young woman, something else that Chicago Fire will continue to play with is Casey’s (Jesse Spencer) promotion changing the dynamic between him and everyone else.

“We’re going to keep digging into that,” Derek explained. “I think one benefit that’s come out of it from a writing standpoint now that Casey’s a white shirt is, the amount of scenes with [Jesse] and Eamonn [Walker] in the workplace has been a real discovery and joy. Not that they weren’t in scenes before, but now they have this new dynamic. They’re both leaders.

“Even Casey’s office, from where he was down in the lieutenant’s quarters, he starts thinking about moving down the hall to where Boden is. We’re going to keep playing with that storyline and the fact Casey’s the ranking officer between him and Severide.”

Which brings us to a difficult dilemma if you’re the showrunner of Chicago Fire. Casey’s promotion represents a bit of a quandary from a production standpoint; how do you move a deserving main character forward in his career when you have to keep him around the firehouse?

For that matter, how do you decide what to do with any main character to keep things feeling realistic, such as the season-opening reveal that no one died in the warehouse fire despite having four characters trapped inside?

“You’ve got to think those things through,” Derek told us. “I think one where we really didn’t think it through was Herrmann, early on in the show’s history, went for his Lieutenant’s exam and got it. We were like well, that’ll be surprising—and then we realized, he won’t be on truck anymore. He’ll have to move to engine or out of the firehouse. So we just manufactured the storyline where he pissed off the wrong white shirts so never actually got his promotion.

“These are the things [that] we don’t want to make a mistake again, so we have to figure out. You want them to get promoted, to reach their dream, and the audience is pulling for these types of things. And yet we don’t want to mess up the dynamic of our show so we have to be smart about it.”

As for why no one was killed in the cliffhanger that ended last season and opened Chicago Fire season 6? That’s because they felt the bigger surprise would be no one dying, when the whole audience was expecting that someone had to.

“You have to answer some of these threats every now and then with a tragedy happening, or else the audience will think you pulled the rug out from under them too many times,” Derek conceded, pointing out the other times where Fire has had characters killed or hurt.

“We had [Leslie] Shay die in the season 3 premiere, and the second episode of season 5 we had Jimmy [Borrelli] walk face first into a fireball that burned half his face off. We had Anna [Turner] die last year.

“To us the surprising thing coming back from season 5 and into season 6 was that no one did die, and by design, because we wanted to fool the audience,” he continued. “[With] Casey getting his medal where you thought it was a funeral. But we didn’t want to bum everyone out, just kick off season 6. Now in the middle of the season, we might have someone punch out again.”

So keep your eyes open, because Chicago Fire could have another shocker or two up its sleeve in this next batch of episodes. But it’s not easy for Derek Haas and his team to keep the stakes high while also keeping all of the characters on the show!

Still, there’s at least one more big development around the corner: “There’s going to be a real Butch Cassidy and Sundance moment with Casey and Severide this year,” Derek teased, and we’ll let you decide what that might mean.

Next: Our Chicago Fire season 6 midseason predictions

Don’t miss the Chicago Fire midseason premiere tonight on NBC at 10 p.m. What do you think the episode will have in store? Let us know in the comments.