'Chicago Fire' Season 4 Is All About Conflicts: Here Are 9 to Watch

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Remember all that infighting at Firehouse 51 towards the end of Season 3 of Chicago Fire? Well, like many of the infernos they try to put out, this one’s determined to just keep blazing into the new season, which kicks off tonight at 10 p.m. on NBC.

After three separate conversations about the new season, executive producer Matt Olmstead and stars Taylor Kinney and Eamonn Walker made it quite clear to Yahoo TV that this coming season is bringing with it more than a few big conflicts, and they start from the very top of the CFD food chain. “There’s a trickle-down effect,” Olmstead explains. “There’s some jockeying for the position of the new commissioner, which operates on a different pay scale than anyone who’s in the firehouse but because of that, there’s certain ramifications in terms of looking at Boden [Walker] and how he runs 51.”

Let’s take a look at those ramifications, as well as many others from big decisions made at the end of last season.

1. Chief Riddle (Fredric Lehne) vs. Boden and Severide (Kinney)
Olmstead: “In the first episode, we have a new character, Chief Riddle, who shows up and informs Boden and Severide that there’s been a big turnover on Squad, which Severide runs as lieutenant, and they pick off the names of all the people who’ve gone through Squad: Vargas and Hadley and Mills and Rice. Because now there’s a bit of a focus on 51, they take the lieutenantship away from Severide and bring in a new character, Captain Patterson (Brian White), who’s going to take over Squad.”

2. Patterson vs. Boden
Walker: "Patterson is an old friend of Boden’s, so it definitely puts him between a rock and a hard place. Severide is like one of his sons. The real choice comes down to who is he going to back? And I think you know where the answer lies with that.”

3. Severide vs. Patterson
Kinney: “When I’m used to making these split-second decisions on my own without any sort of worry or thought of repercussion or reprimand, now I have to deal with that. I’ve taken a back seat which is a new role. I don’t like it. … There’s a lot of stuff going on, and I see it, but my word doesn’t really get too far or matter in this circle of politics.”

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4. Severide vs. Himself
Kinney: “I’m not given an ultimatum, but do I want to stay here and do this? … There’s someone else telling him what to do and it just doesn’t vibe. He’s not used to it. He doesn’t like it. When you’re being micromanaged, that’s when it gets tough. That’s when he says, ‘I don’t know that I want to stay here.’”

Olmstead: “Severide’s left with the decision: You can put your nose to the grindstone, prove you’re worth it, and work your way back, or go find a new house to work at, which is fairly common. Is he going to admit that maybe I do have some failings as a leader of men and work on it or just bail?”

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5. Casey vs. Voight
At the end of Season 3, Matt Casey (Jesse Spencer) went missing after teaming up with his nemesis, Chicago P.D.’s Sgt. Voight (Jason Beghe), to bring down a human trafficking ring led by a strip club owner (Eric Mabius) Casey was doing some construction work for.

Olmstead: “We find Casey fairly soon… and he’s left with the fact that this girl who got killed actually trying to uncover the same thing he was — this trafficking ring that was going on — and he’s told to leave it alone. But Casey being Casey, he’s not going to leave it alone. He wants to avenge her death but also fulfill a promise that he made which is that there’s still girls out there being trafficked and no one seems to care about them. He takes it upon himself — against Voight’s advice — to try to figure out what happened.

"We waited for a long time — we’ve crossed over characters on the shows, but we definitely intentionally held out on any sort of cross between Voight and Casey because of their backstory. There’s no way these guys were going to just shake hands and work together on something. So we waited until this one. You have Casey indignant that this is not being run well, Voight feels guilty because he kind of enlisted Casey to keep on looking around at the strip club, and it turns into a long-awaited conflict between these two characters. We really hit the gas on this one and did an accelerated storyline that takes place over the first two episodes.”

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6. Dawson (Monica Raymund) vs. Her Pregnancy
Olmstead: “Dawson doesn’t know when the right time is to let Casey know what she knows. It’s a struggle for her. It’s not just the normal progression of what happens when a couple finds out that the woman’s pregnant. It’s complicated, not the least by the fact that they weren’t even officially dating when this happened.”

7. Dawson vs. Boden and Her Place in 51
Olmstead: “As a firefighter if you’re pregnant, you can’t be on active duty. Severide comes to her aid because he knows somebody in arson investigation and makes a phone call on her behalf.”

Walker: “The real problem for Boden has been them both being in the house. And he’s already turned a little bit of a blind eye to what’s going on. … Now that there is the pregnancy, he’s actually really happy for them. The fact that she is now pregnant and going over to another department, that makes it all OK.”

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8. Boden vs. Borelli (new castmember Steven R. McQueen)
Walker: “Everybody clashes with Boden until you get how the house runs. And the house runs in a very simple way, which is, we have each other’s backs. The antics of how [new candidate Jimmy Borelli] enters into the show comes from a very selfish nature. So if you’re selfishness rises to a point where Boden notices it, you’re going to clash.”

9. Borelli vs. Casey
Olmstead: “Casey recognizes greatness in this kid and really wants to put in the time to mentor him because he believes if he leaves — whenever that happens — he’d feel good about that fact that he groomed somebody to maybe take his place.”

No matter what happens, they’ve always got Molly’s. And we’ve always got new episodes of Chicago Fire Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC.