Chicago Fire season 14 episode 17 recap: Severide makes his move against Severide

Heading into Chicago Fire season 14, episode 16, we knew the arrival of Chief Hopkins would shake things up and ruffle some feathers. However, nothing could have prepared us for the personal vendetta that Hopkins would have for Firehouse 51’s longtime lieutenant, Kelly Severide. 

From the moment he arrived at 51, Hopkins made it clear that he was not a fan of Severide. After doing some digging, Severide would come to discover that Hopkins had worked with his father Benny back in the day, and Hopkins has been holding a long-time grudge after Benny wrote him up on call. As Hopkins made clear, now that he has power in the CFD, he plans to use it to weed out nepo-baby firefighters who only made it where they are through their connections. This meant putting permanent roots down at 51 to directly oversee the day-to-day operations out of the firehouse. 

Interestingly, Chicago Fire season 14, episode 17, "Sway," does not pick up with the Severide and Hopkins drama. Instead, we open with Violet at a bar as Novak joins her. Not wanting to keep secrets any longer, Violet finally comes clean about hooking up with Vasquez a few months ago after Carver came to town. Violet assures Novak nothing is going on between them and stresses that she thought Novak was over Vasquez as she was dating Frost at the time. Novak is understanding of the situation—or at least she tells Violet this as her face tells a different story. 

The action then moves to the following day as Herrmann and Kidd head into 51 for their shift. As the pair walk along, Kidd brings Herrmann up to speed on everything that went down between Hopkins and Severide as she reveals Severide is out for captain's training. Before leaving for training, Severide gave Kidd strict orders not to tangle with Hopkins while he’s away.

After dropping her things off in her locker, Kidd goes to see Hopkins and introduce herself. To her surprise, he seems to be a fan of her, calling her a 'rising star' in the department. He begins to tell her that Capp and Tony will be working with her on Truck during the shift, but their conversation is cut short as they head out to a fire at a surgery center.

During the call, Hopkins watches the team as Stella leads the call. They're able to get everyone out safely, with Kidd helping to evacuate a patient who was undergoing surgery at the time of the fire and the nurse who stayed behind to monitor the patient.

When they get back to 51, Herrmann reveals a bar down the street is starting a half-priced drinks promotion on Friday nights, and Herrmann is not about to back down without a fight. To compete, he’s launching a Friday night trivia, and he enlists the 51 team to rally for what will be Molly's first trivia night. Hopkins enters, and the team prepares for criticism, but to their surprise, Hopkins praises them all for a job well done as he comments about understanding why 51 has a reputation for being the best in the city.  

In her office, Kidd is preparing her incident report as a call comes through for her. On the phone is a woman who informs Kidd the fire was not an accident and was set on purpose. She asks Kidd to look into the fire before more people are harmed but hangs up before Kidd can gather any additional information.

Kidd brings this to Hopkins and notes there are no signs of arson. He's impressed with her arson investigation skills, and she mentions that Severide is excellent at arson investigating and she must have picked up on some things from him over the years. Hopkins asks why the anonymous whistleblower called Kidd instead of the police, and Kidd suggested it could be someone from the scene. She suggests it could have been the OR nurse, as she was the only one she interacted with on the scene. Hopkins agrees the nurse is a good place to start and has her loop in OFI and speak with the nurse at Med. 

In the common room, Violet and Herrmann do rock, paper, scissors for first pick for their trivia teams. Violet wins and drafts Capp first, Herrmann takes Novak, Violet then takes Ballard, and Herrmann gets Vasquez by default. She seems to pass over Vasquez on purpose, and Novak tells her she didn’t need to do that with Vasquez, as she again assures Violet that she doesn't need to be awkward about this. Directly after, Violet reveals she picked Capp to try to get him to convince Tony to join their team, as his knowledge could help make or break their odds of winning. The only problem is that Capp and Tony are in a fight at the moment. 

Kidd and Captain Hargrave go see the surgical center nurse, Elizabeth. Kidd asks about the call, and the nurse says it wasn’t her, as she doesn’t have her phone on her. They ask if she has any idea how the fire started, and she mentions she’s heard rumors about complaints against the facility, and she suggests there was negligence with safety protocols. With this new knowledge, Hargrave heads back to the scene to look into the fire as Kidd heads out on a call. 

After responding to the call, Kidd joins Hargrave at the scene of the surgical center fire as Hargrave brings her up to speed. Hargrave admits she can’t find the source for the fire, but it seems to have originated at a sink. As they open the pipe in the sink, they find charring inside that suggests the fire was about 2,000 degrees, which means the fire was almost certainly caused by a chemical reaction. Kidd points out that this is a major violation of chemical handling, as they speculate about whether someone purposefully mixed the chemicals that caused the fire. Kidd notices the doors were locked, suggesting the person who did this had the keys, and they head out to speak with the facility's janitor.

Chief Hopkins makes his move against Severide

Back at 51, Hopkins gets a visit from a mysterious woman who works within the CFD. He greets her upon her arrival and mentions he needs good counsel, and she never fails him. Hopkins notes that Severide has worked more arson cases than anyone outside of OFI, and the woman encourages him to drop this grudge against Benny Severide. Hopkins alludes to Benny setting back both of their careers as he notes he has a rare moment of power and doesn't want to let it pass. She asks about his plans for Severide as he notes he needs her help before we cut away from the conversation.  

Elsewhere, Kidd and Hargrave go to the home of a janitor at the surgical center, and Kidd recognizes his wife’s voice as the woman on the phone. The man explains he was offered money to sabotage the clinic in hopes of getting them shut down, but he turned them down. They wanted him to pour chemicals into the sink, but he told them that could cause a fire and rejected their money and offer. 

Kidd and Hargrave take the information to Hopkins, but he notes they don’t have concrete evidence yet, which is key to going after Helix, the large corporation that attempted to bribe the janitor. Without a smoking gun, they have nothing, which is when Kidd pieces together that there is only one person who has mentioned the alleged negligence: the OR nurse, Elizabeth. They head to the hospital to confront Elizabeth about pouring the chemicals down the sink, which caused the fire and she confesses to her role in the fire. 

This information is the smoking gun they were looking for, which allows the CFD to bring in the CPD to make arrests. As Hopkins and Kidd prepare to head out after watching the CPD make arrests at Helix, he admits to her that if she learned everything from Severide, he must be good. He then comments about her having a very impressive team at 51 and he's proud to be part of it.

Kidd eventually meets up with the rest of the 51 team at Molly's, where Capp and Tony have been mopping the floors of Herrmann's and Violet's teams. At the bar, Vasquez tells Novak he’s not used to winning, and she comments that one more drink and she’ll start making mistakes, to which he replies, "What's wrong with that?" She admits it’s too bad he hooked up with Violet as they could have had a good time together as she excuses herself. 

Speaking with Herrmann, Kidd admits she might have softened Hopkins a bit and hopes that he’ll ease up on Severide and they can figure out a way to work together. Sadly, though, that does not seem to be the case.

As the episode comes to a close, we see Hopkins arriving at 51 the following morning and enlisting Lucy for help with an errand. He hands her a file, which happens to be an internal affairs review form for Severide. He asks her to take it down to Internal Affairs, which she reluctantly agrees to do but not before taking a peep inside the folder. When looking at the form, she finds that Hopkins is reporting Severide for "dereliction of duty" and looking to launch an internal affairs investigation, likely using his history of working with OFI on arson investigations against him.