Chicago Fire did not pull its punches on Wednesday, April 16. The series revealed devastating news regarding its cast of characters, both onscreen and off. Onscreen, the episode "Post Mortem" had the near death of Jack Damon (Michael Bradway) during a building fire. Then, offscreen, NBC confirmed that two characters, Darren Ritter (Daniel Kyri) and Sam Carver (Jake Lockett) will be leaving.
The details makes these revelations even worse. Damon suffered lung damage, and may never be able to fight fires again. Ritter and Carver are poised to exit before or during the season 13 finale. And the characters that all of them are closest to just happened to be absent during "Post Mortem." It was a case of awful timing.
Chicago Fire pulled both medics from "Post Mortem"
Lizzie Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) struck up a semi-romance with Damon over the last few episodes, and despite the fact that the latter decided to cut things off to focus on his career, it was looking like they were going to be entertaining a will they/won't they dynamic for the foreseeable future. We were very much looking forward to it. Unfortunately, the episode that may prove to be Damon's last, as least as an employee of Firehouse 51, was missing Novak. The character was MIA.
We understand that Ritter and Carver didn't leave in "Post Mortem," but the fact that Carver was put in danger during the episode, to the point that many fans believed he was the firefighter who was hurt in the house fire over Damon, made the news of his impending departure all the more difficult. It would have been nice to see a Damon and Violet (Hanako Greensmith) scene. No such luck. Violet was also missing during the episode.
Violet and Novak will return April 23
Did we mention that Carver had been on a leave of absence prior to returning and nearly dying in "Post Mortem"? Or that Carver and Violet had a tense argument right before he left, which has stuck with and been a source of guilt for Violet ever since? If ever an episode called for a scene between two characters, it was this one, but we were not given one. It's compounded by the fact that Violet is arguably Ritter's best friend at 51.
Chicago Fire has been making a point of withholding certain cast members from certain episodes in an effort to cut down on overall costs. This is part of the reason why the Ritter and Carver characters (and possibly Damon) are being written out of the show.
We understand the reasoning behind having Novak and Violet miss a week, but it felt as though the writers could not have picked a worse week to pull them from the rotation. At least we know they are returning next week thanks to the Fire promo (see above).