Chicago Fire season 7 character preview: Otis

Where we left off

Last season of Chicago Fire was simultaneously awesome for Otis, and completely not awesome for Otis. After a long period of being down on his luck romantically, he walked into a failing bar and found love with the owner’s daughter Lily (recurring guest star Ariane Rinehart). Lily surprised Otis by reciprocating his affection, and stuck by him even when things got difficult.

Which they did to a major degree. In the season’s first two-hour movie event, Otis was one of two characters stuck inside a burning house when live ammunition began to go off. He was struck by a bullet and rushed to the hospital, where he pulled through life-saving surgery only to have it seem like he might be paralyzed.

Luckily, Otis wasn’t permanently injured, and after a few episodes of physical therapy, was able to reclaim his spot on the team from Jake Cordova (recurring guest star Damon Dayoub) and return to active duty.

Even his time away proved to be a good thing. Not only did Otis bust a pair of scam artists while he was on desk duty, he also was the person who uncovered that Carl Grissom (Gary Cole) was faking all of his records—thus alerting everyone to Grissom’s true nature. Unfortunately, he was too late to stop Grissom from getting the fire commissioner’s job, but without Otis no one would know the truth.