Chicago Fire: 3 Ways to Write Off Severide but Leave Him a Backdoor

The writers need to write him off… But leave a backdoor in case of Taylor's return.

When Taylor Kinney initially took his leave of absence, no one expected it to last this long. Until the very end of this season, we've been hoping to at least catch a glimpse of Severide in the finale — but instead, we got confirmation that Taylor is still unavailable in the form of the "Kelly went somewhere and no one knows where" story.

This clearly indicates that we can't hope to get Severide back any time soon.

Considering how long it's taken him so far and considering the show needs to keep going, this only leaves the writers with one real option: they must find a way to write Kelly down at the start of the next season while leaving a backdoor for him for if and when Taylor Kinney is ready to come back to the role.

It's a hard task to pull off without ruining either Kelly's or Stella's characters, but here are some ideas on how it could potentially be done.

Undercover gone wrong

Casey, who had a brief but very welcome appearance in the last episode, learned that Severide was on some terrorist threat investigation.

This presents a great opportunity: if Kelly's cover was blown and he was at risk, his current agency would fake his death and have him keep working with them.

While it would be a perfect excuse for why Severide's not able to even contact Stella, it would still leave just enough room for his eventual return someday.

One wrong step

This is a darker yet still valid idea… That's not exactly welcome in our eyes, too, but listen: we're working with what we have here.

As a result of his highly dangerous and very secret investigation, Kelly Severide could sustain a career-ending though not life-threatening injury. This would definitely end his service but leave him alive.

Kelly could then return to Chicago and stay with Stella being a great husband behind the scenes — and one day, when Taylor's back, appear on the screen again.

As classic as it gets

Alternatively, Kelly Severide could go full Sherlock Holmes mode and disappear after an explosion or an arson. No body found, Severide's presumed dead — perhaps, he went out as a hero taking out some of the bad guys with him.

Either way, that would be a sad day for all of us, but then there's the most classic catch.

Kelly is not in fact dead, and he's free to come back any time, under any circumstances whatsoever — after he takes care of the biggest bad guy, of course.

Sure, there could've been a plethora of other ways to write Kelly off, but we tried to balance one too many factors.

First of all, we don't want him dead as he might one day return, so real death is out of the equation. Second, we don't want to break anyone's character — so no Kelly ghosting Stella or Stella cheating on him to justify a divorce.

These three ways are as good as it gets, we suppose. Out of all of them, we would've totally preferred the first or the third one — after all, if Severide's death was a set-up to take down the terrorists, not only could he come back, but he could come back as a hero.