Stella Kidd's 'Chicago Fire' Fate Has Finally Been Decided, Once and for All

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers for Season 11 of Chicago Fire.

As Chicago Fire dives deeper into Season 11, fans are scrambling to predict what’s to come. There has been good news and bad news throughout the show: Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) officially passed her exam to become a lieutenant, but the show also lost one central character, Lieutenant Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer), during Chicago Fire's 200th episode.

In 2021, fans also noticed that Miranda was missing during most of Season 10. Now in Season 11, her fate has been on the rocks. Many expected that Kidd could leave Firehouse 51, especially after the cliffhanger Season 11 winter finale. So, is Stella also leaving Chicago Fire? Here’s what’s in store for her future.

After many ups and downs in Kidd's career that forced Miranda off the show in Season 10, she told Entertainment Weekly:

"I'm not ready [to say goodbye to Kidd]. There's just a part of this industry, though, that I think it's healthy and good to practice detachment by really embracing the impermanent nature of life. And how everything changes and everything grows. So, no matter what happens, this has been one of the most transformational experiences of my life. But, you know, you always gotta be ready for what might happen."

Luckily, Chicago Fire showrunner Derek Haas told TVLine in November 2021 that there were always plans to bring Kidd back to the show. During the show’s Season 10 winter finale, Kidd made a small cameo where she surprised now-husband Severide (Taylor Kinney) at their apartment. The sweet reunion continued into the winter premiere in January 2022 when she officially returned to Firehouse 51.

Fans weren’t sure if she was back for good or would leave her team again. Fortunately, Derek confirmed in another TVLine interview in December 2021 that the character isn’t leaving the show anytime soon.

“Yes, she’s back for good, but she has a lot of explaining to do,” he teased ahead of the Season 10 winter premiere, adding, “The next batch of episodes, certainly, the driving force of them will be Stella Kidd’s return to Firehouse 51 and all the offshoots of that.”

Kidd stayed on for the rest of Season 10 and returned to Chicago Fire for Season 11. However, after Season 11 fall finale, fans worried that her role as Kidd could end soon. In the episode “Nemesis,” Kidd and 51 newbie Sam Carver (Jake Lockett) find themselves in a dangerous situation.

The firefighters join the S.W.A.T. team to help a civilian with a grenade in their leg. Severide rushes to the scene to save his wife from the grenade. Unfortunately, he's too late and arrives just in time to watch Kidd and Carver go into the house after being told to remove the grenade and save everyone.

Severide is shaken to his core when he sees his wife risk her life to stop the grenade. The episode ended without resolve for the couple, and without assurance that Kidd would survive the explosion.

In an interview with Entertainment Tonight, Derek said the cliffhanger provided a way to shift Kidd and Severide’s usual routine of her being on the sidelines as he nearly died.

“We've done a bunch of cliffhangers where Severide was in danger,” Derek explained. “In fact, the memorable ones are him in the boat that's sinking to the bottom of Lake Michigan. Kidd was on the shore of that one, and we wanted to flip it and have Severide being outside of a very harrowing call and helpless.” But Derek doesn't say anything about it shaking their relationship to its very core.

In fact, in Season 11, Episode 10, "Something for the Pain," both Kidd and Carver survive the explosion, although Carver walks away relatively unharmed. Kidd, on the other hand, has a deep shrapnel wound that affects her breathing. She even needs surgery. But within the episode, a three-week time jump comforts us in the knowledge that Kidd not only survives, but comes back to 51 with full force.

Watch Chicago Fire Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST on NBC.