If there is one thing that Chicago Fire has always done well, it’s finding ways to keep the spirit of former characters alive on the show regardless of how much time has passed since their last appearance. This applies both to characters who passed away and characters who simply left town, which is part of the brilliance of the show.
These characters were key parts of the show’s journey and the lives of the characters on the show, so it makes sense for the characters to reference both their fallen friends and to keep in touch with the members of their 51 family who have since left the show.
Sometimes these mentions come in mentioning catching up with former members of the show such as Brett, Casey, and Boden via conversations such as how Kidd mentioned talking with Brett about her and Severide’s plans to adopt. Others, the references come up in one-off lines reflecting on the firefighters lost along the way which was the case in Chicago Fire season 13, episode 13, “Born of Fire,” when a brief conversation revisited a major storyline that fizzled out following the unexpected death of a major character on the show: Brian “Otis” Zvonecek.
Chicago Fire continues to pay homage to Otis, keeping his spirit alive
At the top of Chicago Fire season 13, episode 13, “Born of Fire,” Mouch mentions to the group during breakfast that he heard a fellow firefighter retired to Florida to raise sugar gliders which sparks a conversation about what the members of 51 have in mind for their own retirements. During the conversation, Herrmann mentions that when he retires he wants to expand Molly’s into the Ditka’s of Chicago pubs.
The retirement talk gets Herrmann thinking and he realizes that if he wants to expand Molly’s he has to start building it now and building the brand name. This inspires him to create a signature cocktail for Molly’s to help with the branding, which leads to some fun hijinks as he tries out recipes.
Toward the episode’s end, Mouch comes into Molly’s before opening and asks Herrmann about the winning cocktail. Herrmann tells him they went with Born of Fire, a smoky martining inspired by Squad’s slogan which has a good firefighter branding to it. As the friends talk, Mouch comments that Herrmann seems really excited about the idea of expanding the Molly’s brand and asks him how serious he is about the idea to which Herrmann replies, “Molly’s North was a hit and it would have been still been up and running if Otis hadn’t… you know if he was still around.”
It was a brief one-off line as the conversation moved along quickly from there, but one that revisited a storyline that hasn’t been touched upon in some time on the show: Molly’s North.
Back in season 6, Molly’s expanded with the opening of Molly’s North which came about after Molly’s partnered with a pub about to close. The new addition to the Molly’s franchise was quite a success, but sadly Molly’s North closed its doors after Otis’s death when Lily made the difficult decision to close the pub.
So what happened to Otis on Chicago Fire?
While Mouch and Herrmann’s conversation about Otis alluded to his death, it failed to provide context which led some fans to question exactly what had happened to Otis.
Otis died a hero’s death back in season 8 when he died in the season 8 premiere of Chicago Fire, “Sacred Ground.” In the episode, the 51 was responding to a mattress factory fire and Otis failed to evacuate in time and was in the factory still when a boiler exploded. While the team was able to pull him from the rubble and get him to Med, Otis sadly died as a result of the injuries he sustained in the fire and he passed away at Med with Cruz by his side.
The decision to kill Otis was one that shocked fans as it was the show’s biggest character death at the time and it remains one of the most shocking deaths. Ironically, it turns out that that was the whole point.
As Chicago Fire’s showrunner at the time Derek Haas revealed, he purposefully came to the decision out of a desire to “put some teeth back into the show, and we gotta show that the dangers are real.” And it wasn’t a decision they took lightly.
Even back in 2019, the Chicago Fire creative team set out to make sure it wasn’t just a death that was done for the surprise factor and invest time in the storyline.
“It was a big deal to us to show that this wasn’t just a writing device that we would use for the surprise factor and then forget about it and pretend that we’re going to have a season where there’s this character who is beloved that is forgotten. No, we’re not doing that. We’re emotionally going to invest time and story time in almost every character and how they deal with a loss like this differently,” Haas told TVLine following the season 8 premiere.
All these years later, the show is still fulfilling that promise by keeping Otis’s spirit alive with mentions of the character still coming up all these seasons later.