Warning: spoilers are ahead for Episode 10 of Chicago Fire Season 14 in the 2026 TV schedule, called “Carry A Torch” and available streaming next day with a Peacock subscription.
Chicago Fire picked up this week with an eerie feeling in Firehouse 51 due to the absence of Engine 51, with the vehicle being decommissioned and Mouch assigned to a difference house. Most of the first responders were too absorbed in their own problems to join Herrmann in acting out in response to Mouch’s exit, though, notably including the growing gulf between Severide and Kidd. The timing of Van Meter‘s brush with death and losing Isaiah took a toll on both, and they were dealing with it separately rather than together.
Or so it seemed, anyway! The two came together by the end of the episode, getting honest about their feelings and Stella addressing the tragic plot point that was so abruptly dropped after the Season 14 premiere: her pregnancy. It would have been an emotional scene as scripted no matter what Taylor Kinney and Miranda Rae Mayo did with it, but the actors crushed it, and I have to credit Mayo in particular for making me reach for the tissues.
The Loss They Haven’t Been Dealing With
As you may recall, Season 13 ended on Stella joyfully letting Severide know that she was pregnant, in a scene that showrunner Andrea Newman told CinemaBlend involved had “everybody behind the monitor… crying.” That seemed to set up a pregnancy storyline for Season 14 that would surely be complicated by Stella’s status as the Truck 81 lieutenant.
Even though behind-the-scenes dance videos showed Miranda Rae Mayo not wearing the kinds of pregnancy prosthetics that Jessy Schram is now wearing on Chicago Med, I hadn’t given up on the idea that Mayo simply filmed some scenes before a flashforward to when her character would be visibly pregnant. Surely that happy ending to Season 13 would last at least a little ways into Season 14, right?
Not so! An early scene in Season 14 revealed that Stella had miscarried very early in the pregnancy, immediately ending the storyline that had been set up so joyously in the previous finale. I’ve felt ever since that premiere back in September 2025 that one of the most emotional storylines from the past few seasons was cut short and very swiftly replaced by one that involved fostering Isaiah.
While that’s been a solid storyline with Isaiah as a compelling new character, fans have also seen Firehouse 51 heroes dealing with fostering and adoption before with Casey and Dawson first, then Cruz and Chloe. I just felt like a genuine fallout from the miscarriage was missing.
On-Screen Healing Can (Finally) Happen
Apparently, I could have had more faith in Chicago Fire! While fans have had to wait several months and the turn of the year for the show to delve back into the story, the emotional climax of “Carry A Torch” involved Stella and Severide opening up about their recent struggles, with Severide sharing that Van Meter waking up made him want to be with her as his family. For her part, she communicated why losing Isaiah was so hard on her, even though he’s doing so well with his mom. She told her husband:
Maybe I rushed into fostering fast because I just thought that it would make all of the feelings about losing the baby go away. And it didn’t. It was so hard. It hurt so much to watch Isaiah go. It felt like everything all at once, but you seemed so okay with it. And I just, I’m like, I don’t know what is wrong with me.
Whatever heartstrings I had left after watching Herrmann’s reaction to Mouch’s transfer were officially plucked by Stella’s confession about the impact of the miscarriage, and Severide rose to the occasion with his response:
There’s nothing wrong with you, and I’m not okay. Not by a long shot.
While this isn’t the first time that the lieutenants have set the goal of improving their communication, Miranda Rae Mayo and Taylor Kinney were pretty fantastic throughout the scene. I’d spent the episode wondering if Stella seeing the mother with her newborn was going to make her rush to restart the adoption process, and speculating about whether Severide’s reaction Van Meter’s scare would further the divide between them. Instead, they’ve admitted to not being okay and committed to not being okay together.
Is The Pregnancy Journey Restarting As Season 14 Continues?
Also, if fans are going theorize about another Stellaride pregnancy, now is probably the time to start. I’ve always assumed that the bulk of a Chicago Fire pregnancy would happen off camera for a character who’s usually in the action, and a pregnancy starting now could reasonably be on the verge of delivery by the Season 15 premiere in the fall of the 2026-2027 TV season.
That’s not to say that I’m expecting Season 14 to end on a repeat of Stella dropping pregnancy news on her husband, and to follow Van Meter’s daughter’s example with a questionable fire-related joke, I may be imagining an inferno out of a little bit of Stellaride smoke. NBC technically hasn’t even confirmed a fifteenth season yet at the time of writing. But it would be interesting to see a different path to parenthood for these characters beyond the failed attempt by Dawson and Casey and the successful adoption by Cruz and Chloe.
After all, with Chicago Fire literally using a love triangle between Vasquez, Violet, and Carver with Jake Lockett’s return to One Chicago, it’s nice to have a Firehouse 51 romance option that’s well past the will they/won’t they stage. Check out the promo below:
Welcome back, Carver! Whatever he’s been up to off screen for the past few months, he’s looking pretty dashing! If you look closely at the preview, you can see that he’s wearing a Denver FD jacket rather than a CFD jacket, so it seems that he might just be in town for a professional visit rather than to stay. Still, I wouldn’t be seeing him back for at least a few episodes after Jake Lockett’s kind words after Carver was written out.
As for Stellaride… well, I’m glad to see that they’re able to deal with their loss from back in the fall with a united front. There are still a couple of episodes left before One Chicago takes a break for NBC to air the 2026 WInter Olympics, and the three shows will return with a mega three-part crossover even between Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med at March 4. You can also revisit early episodes of the series streaming on Peacock.
