Chicago Fire season 6’s best moments, ranked

2. Otis returns to Truck 81

Chicago Fire fans got a good scare when Brian “Otis” Zvonecek (Yuri Sardarov) was shot during the season’s first two-hour event. He did come back to Firehouse 51 on desk duty, but it was his official return to firefighting in “The Strongest Among Us” that got us a little choked up.

First of all, when Otis was shot several episodes earlier and then revealed to have lost feeling in his legs, we weren’t sure that the show wasn’t going to pull a Jimmy Borelli and write him out for good. But the storyline with Otis going through physical therapy, and also dealing with the fears that came along with a serious injury, was one of the best plotlines in the entire season.

Audiences’ hearts broke with Otis as we listened to him talk about how he’d lost his place, coming to the realization that so much of his identity was tied up in being part of Truck 81. We got to see, albeit only in a handful of scenes, the struggle he fought to get back on his feet again. And we saw how, while he was working a desk job at the firehouse, it was great but it wasn’t quite the same.

So when “The Strongest Among Us” revealed that Otis had indeed passed his physical and was back on the truck, there was much rejoicing—not just from his fellow firefighters and paramedics but from Chicago Fire fans as well, because we knew how much adversity he’d overcome and how proud we were of him for it.