Chicago Fire season 7 character preview: Wallace Boden

Where we left off

Chief Boden’s story arc last season was all about being in charge, or not as the case may be. He started the season supporting Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) as Casey made the move up from Lieutenant to Captain. It was Boden who pulled Casey aside and imparted some wisdom about being a “white shirt” and how different it was from what he’d done before.

Later in the season, though, Boden’s own ambitions began to come to the forefront. Severide’s old mentor Carl Grissom (recurring guest star Gary Cole) suggested to Boden that he should take over Grissom’s job when Grissom retired. Wanting to spend more time with his family, and his boat, our Chief started to seriously entertain the idea.

Yet it was yanked out from under him when Grissom went back on his word and not only decided not to retire, but that he wanted to move up in rank. Casey and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) got Boden to agree to run for fire commissioner—which put him on a collision course with Grissom, and the other man would do anything to win.

Boden and Severide were accused of taking a bribe in one episode, and then in the season finale, Otis (Yuri Sardarov) helped Boden discover that Grissom had been faking his records all along. Too bad, though, because by then Grissom had won the vacant commissioner’s spot. One of the last shots of the season was of a despondent Boden.