Chief Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) hit a personal and professional low point when his wife Monica (KaDee Strickland) was killed in Chicago Fire season 13. The character spiraled, looking for someone to blame, and acted recklessly on the job despite the consequences it had on his safety and career. We thought the worst was behind him, but the promo for "The Bad Guy" suggests otherwise.
The episode title definitely caught our eye when we first glimpsed it, but we did not expect Pascal to be the one positioned as the titular character. The promo shows that the man responsible for causing the car accident that took Monica Pascal's life gets caught up in another freak accident. Or at least, it resembles a freak accident.
Pascal is prime suspect in attempted murder
It turns out, the fuel line on the man's car had been cut, and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) discovers a tool marked "Chicago Fire Department" stuck in the car gears. There's no getting around the elephant in the room, which is that Pascal is the prime suspect when it comes to who may have sabotaged the man's car.
We've already seen Pascal attempt to confront the man in public. In the episode "In the Rubble," the distraught 51 Chief tried to launch a criminal investigation against the man, claiming that he needed to pay for what happened. He even forced the firehouse to return to the scene of the crime and look around for any clues that might have been missed the first time around. They didn't find any.
When the legal approach didn't work, Chief Pascal confronted the man in public, yelling at him and claiming he murdered Monica. It was not one of the Chief's best moments, and in truth, if we wanted to pinpoint his lowest moment of season 13, it was probably this. The character has seemingly grown since, however, and regained the poise that we knew him for during the first half of the season.
The 51 Chief might be getting framed
Pascal's masterful and dutiful handling of a tragic situation in the episode "Post Mortem" had us under the impression he was back to his old self. He even put his job on the line to protect those under him, like Severide and Herrmann (David Eigenberg). This not only won back the respect of these men, but won the newfound respect of his 51 predecessor, Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker).
This return to normalcy is what has us hesitant to believe that Chief Pascal would revert to attempted murder. Especially given how sloppy the execution of the whole thing seems to be in the promo. He's a capable man and a veteran firefighter, would he really leave a tool emblazoned with the CFD logo on it for investigators to find? We doubt it.
We could be looking at an instance of Pascal being framed. Or we could be overthinking it, and this is the show's slapdash way of writing the character off the show before the start of the next season. We hope to get answers either way on Wednesday, May 14.