Taylor Kinney’s Chicago Fire Exit: Did Severide’s ‘Final’ Episode Already Air?

It looks Taylor Kinney‘s leave of absence will hit Chicago Fire this week.

TVLine has learned that Wednesday’s episode of the NBC drama will address the abrupt departure of Lieutenant Kelly Severide, which comes following last month’s news that Kinney would be taking a break from the show.

It remains unclear if the actor will appear in this week’s installment, or if Severide’s absence will be explained via other characters. Severide is not mentioned in the official synopsis for the hour, titled “Damage Control.”

As we reported on Jan. 20, Kinney is taking a leave of absence from his role to deal with a personal matter. The production was notified of Kinney’s news on that Friday, and given the unexpected turn of events, script rewrites were required to account for why Severide is missing in action.

TVLine helpfully came up with several scenarios for how the series could explain the firefighter’s temporary vanishing act, which included storylines about a rescue gone wrong and a trip to help out Matt Casey in the Pacific Northwest. But it appears that the show might be going with an explanation closer to our Office of Fire Investigation idea. In the vaguely ominous final minutes of last Wednesday’s episode, the firefighter seemed to have received a note from (or about?) his OFI boss.

“Hey, I got your message about Van Meter. What’s going on?” Severide’s wife Stella asked him. He then turned his phone toward her so she could read the screen, after which she responded, “Wow. What are you going to do?” And then the episode cut to black. Rude!