Chicago Fire season 9, episode 14 recap: What Comes Next

This week’s Chicago Fire wound up being huge for Stellaride fans, including the reveal of whether or not Stella Kidd passed her lieutenant’s test.

Wednesday’s episode “What Comes Next” not only announced if Stella (Miranda Rae Mayo) was getting promoted, it had Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) drop a bomb by admitting that he wanted to bring up the subject of marriage to Stella and see if she’d be open to going down that road again. Plus, Veronicat returned and wrecked everything!

Here’s what happened in the latest Chicago Fire episode for each of your favorite characters.

Chicago Fire season 9, episode 14 recap

Chicago Fire opens pretty much where the last episode left off, as Stella tries to impress the Chicago Fire Department brass and earn her promotion to lieutenant. After a few moments of that, Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) and Severide wonder out loud how it’s going, while everyone else is going through donations for the Firehouse 51 garage sale.

Darren Ritter and Blake Gallo (Daniel Kyri and Alberto Rosende) are in charge and they’re already regretting their life choices. Especially since 2017 included Mouch (Christian Stolte) getting into it with an elderly woman and ending up in small claims court.

The case of the week is a multi-story fire, which proves to be even thornier when a man trapped on the first floor refuses any help until someone gets his wife from upstairs. With time running out, Casey gives Gallo permission to climb up the side of a building again. He’s able to find the unconscious woman and Ambulance 61 takes the couple to Chicago Med.

Severide and Casey return to the firehouse so Casey can continue to grill Severide about Stella. Kelly admits that he wants to talk to Stella about getting married; he’s not proposing, but he wants to know if she’d be open to the idea. Casey is stunned just moments before Stella walks up none the wiser and saying she has no idea how her test went.

As they walk into the firehouse, Casey notices a chemical burn on Ritter’s gear and wonders, “What the hell was in that factory?”

The team huddles up and agrees that further investigation is needed. Violet Mikami (recurring guest star Hanako Greensmith) suggests the offending chemical is sulfuric acid and the Hazmat group is soon called but doesn’t find anything, while Mouch spends his time hoarding stuff he wants from the garage sale. Sylvie Brett (Kara Killmer) needs someone to take Veronicat while her apartment is being fumigated. Surprisingly, no one wants to deal with the psycho kitty.

Severide and Casey decide to go back to the factory themselves. They have a theory that the acid must have gotten on their colleagues from dragging their hoses, and go outside to find that next to the factory is a leaking drum of sulfuric acid. The husband from earlier tells them the vacant lot next door has turned into a dumping ground, and that’s obviously how the fire started.

At the halfway point, Chicago Fire has Brett still trying to figure out what to do with her cat, while Severide wants Casey to tell Brett how he feels. Casey replies “it’s not that simple” just before Severide gets a text from Kim Burgess that sends them to the address of the truck that dumped the acid. They confront the truck driver, who says he just does odd jobs on an app and gives them the name of a gardening company who hired him.

The next day Severide finds out the truck driver has disappeared, so Casey suggests they visit the company themselves. They meet the founder who denies knowing anything about anything, and then runs away. After we get a few minutes of Ritter and Gallo complaining about the garage sale, and Veronicat trashing Casey’s office (because Brett let her out of her carrier), there’s a guy who needs rescuing at a dentist’s office.

Skipping past that, Ritter and Gallo put Veronicat outside, where Mouch (who has taken over the garage sale) accidentally sells the cat thinking the carrier is empty. When Brett overhears, though, she’s not angry; she’s nearly crying happy tears at the idea of not having to deal with the cat anymore. A random guy then shows up and gives Mouch a document that says he’s getting an Award of Valor for that impressive rescue at the party company earlier this season.

Last but definitely not least, our heroes at 51 devise a plan to get justice for the injured woman. Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) borrows Casey’s truck and poses as an app driver so he can try to catch the gardening company red-handed. But he’s shocked when the husband arrives on the scene and punches the guy instead. After stopping the fight, our heroes find the evidence they need to call the cops.

The show winds down with the husband thanking Severide and Casey for all they did, and telling them that his wife has come out of her coma. “I wonder if she knows how much he loves her,” Severide says, which could be equally applicable to both of them.

The last Chicago Fire scene takes place at Molly’s. As both men tell each other to move their respective relationships forward, Boden arrives to inform Stella that her results are in. She’s been promoted to lieutenant! That’s no big surprise, but everyone celebrates, and that’s a good place to leave this one.

What happened in this week's Chicago PD. dark. Next

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