The final episode of Chicago Fire season 14 aired on November 12, and the episode was full of big moments for the show’s characters… or at least for those who managed to make an appearance in the episode.
Heading into the fall finale, it was made clear that Miranda Rae Mayo’s Stella Kidd would be absent from the episode. In the episode before of the finale, Kidd revealed that she was going to leave Chicago to help Isaiah’s mom get settled into the rehab facility in Cleveland. Because of this storyline, we knew not to expect Kidd in the final episode of the year. What we didn’t expect was that Herrmann would also fail to appear in the fall finale.
Chicago Fire’s fall finale fails to explain where Herrmann is
While the show took time to explain Kidd’s absence and even gave fans an update in the fall finale about her settling into Cleveland, it failed to give us any update on Herrmann and his absence. There was no quick conversation between characters to explain that Herrmann was off for the shift or taking some time off to rebuild after the house fire. No, Herrmann simply did not appear in either episode, and the show didn’t even bother to give us an explanation of where he was or what he was doing.
We’ve come to expect characters to miss the odd episode due to the budget constraints it must work around, but it’s not often that a character misses two back-to-back episodes without any explanation at all.
Considering that Herrmann is dealing with the fallout of losing his home in the fire, the show had a built-in ongoing storyline it could have used to explain his absence. It’d be more than understandable for Herrmann to take some time off as he and Cindy work to rebuild their lives after the fire. We honestly expected that Herrmann would take some time off from the job in the immediate wake of the fire, so it’s a shame the show didn’t simply write in a one-off line about Herrmann doing so.
Instead, the character was simply missing without explanation, robbing fans of the chance to see him one last time before the show signed off until 2026.
The good news is that we anticipate Herrmann should be back as early as the winter premiere on January 7, so hopefully we won’t be without one of our favorite firefighters for too much longer.