Eamonn Walker and Tracy Spiridakos left the two series in the season finales airing in the US last night.
The endings of Chicago Fire and the spin-off Chicago PD, which aired in the US on NBC last night, both featured heavy farewells. As widely anticipated, the procedural about the firefighters of Barracks 51 will continue without Commander Wallace Boden, who has been in the series since its debut way back in 2012, while the detective story about the officers of District 21 will do without detective Hailey Upton, a face of the series for eight seasons. But what happened to the characters played by Eamonn Walker And Tracy Spiridakos? If spoilers don’t scare you, we’ll talk about them below.
Chicago Fire 12: Commander Wallace Boden’s Goodbye
In the season 12 finale of Chicago Fire, returning to the city after recent family issues that had distanced him from the 51, Boden made one of those life-changing decisions. Inspired by the courage of a squad leader who put everything on the line for his men in a situation of great danger, Boden realized he had to do more as a leader himself, putting himself on the line for the promotion of deputy commissioner against Robinson (Laura Allen). That’s because, although he always tried to avoid politics, what was at stake was the future of the entire department. And if he were to get it, he would want Herrmann (David Eigenberg) take his place at 51, after proving himself to be someone “who cares about people, who listens, who always leads with his heart”.
Clearly Boden did it. When everyone gathered in his office to congratulate him and say goodbye, there was a lot of emotion, even though he won’t be that far away but only at the department headquarters. “There are people you say goodbye to and people you can never say goodbye to because they’ve become too much a part of who you are. They’ve shaped you and trained you and taught you everything you know,” Kidd said (Miranda Rae Mayo). Cruz (Joe Minoso) credited Boden with making the 51 a family and the barracks a home. The Ritter Sensation (Daniel Kyri) was being born in that place and not knowing what his life was before being a firefighter. Severide (Taylor Kinney) admitted that “now you can do it for the whole department and they will see how lucky we were.” While Mouch’s last words (Christian Stolte) were: “Thank you, boss, for being the best friend and leader anyone could ask for.” Boden finally assured that they will see each other again. And that’s not a lie, because the production has already made it known that Walker will return to play the character occasionally in the future.
Chicago PD 11: Detective Hailey Upton’s farewell
Even for Spiridakos’ character the story ended on a note of hope. After the brutal killing of the serial killer who kidnapped Voight (Jason Beghe), who emerged from this affair safe but rather battered, Upton found herself considering several options for her career, determined to leave Intelligence behind. An awareness that came after a period of personal and professional vulnerability, which ended with the realization that she wanted more for herself, as expressed to Voight himself. After considering working with the FBI (like Sophia Bush’s Erin Lindsay in the season 4 finale), FEMA, and the DEA, Upton hopped into a cab headed to Chicago O’Hare International Airport, without allowing us to understand what job he accepted.
The showrunner Gwen Sigan explained to TVLine that leaving Hailey’s decision undefined is a way to end the character’s arc with a feeling of “hope and possibility. I wanted to convey the idea that the world is now hers and that she is finally in a headspace where she can seeing that there’s so much out there and there’s so much to choose from. The audience can also ask ‘Where is this going?’, because that’s the idea. It could go to so many places.” As for whether that question will be answered in the future, Sigan said that “the door is open. I love the idea that a lot of these characters are still out there and could come back to the series. They’re all in the world and so, maybe someday”.
