Chicago Fire season 8 midseason report: Matthew Casey

What it means

If you’re perplexed about Casey’s character right now, you’ve got every right to be. Jesse Spencer has gotten some good scenes in the first nine episodes of this season, but it seems like the show is waffling on what it wants to do with Casey.

At least last season, as uneven as he was in it, had an arc: Casey trying to move on from Dawson and figure out who he was after the woman he’d built his whole life around. This season has yet to find a clear direction for him. We’ve seen Casey the boss, but sometimes he’s been a little quirky, like continuing to be hard on Gallo even after he learned the truth about Gallo’s family; one would think Casey would have shown some empathy after that, but nope.

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And as for his personal life, that’s completely unclear now. Not only has the show not made any significant move in the Casey and Brett dynamic it set up last season (unless you count some brief awkward conversations), but then it muddled things by having Casey and Dawson hook up again.

So is the show still interested in Casey and Brett, which really hasn’t got off the ground yet? Or has it changed its mind and made Dawson his endgame? And if it’s the latter, how does it plan to handle that considering that Monica Raymund is off the show and has her own series now? None of this makes a whole lot of sense at the moment; either there’s something coming up that will clarify it all, or the writers need to find that clarity pronto.