The big brother of One Chicago, Chicago Fire, is quickly approaching its 300th episode, a significant milestone in the history of the franchise. According to Hanako Greensmith, who plays Violet, the creative team is crafting an unforgettable, massive episode, filled with moments that are “haunting and exciting and thrilling.” Greensmith also made mention that the episode will include characters not seen on the show in a little while, which she believes will “invite a lot of heartwarming material.” The why of their return is easy to ascertain, given how the episode will serve as the last for original cast member Joe Miñoso, and his beloved character Joe Cruz by extension. The who, however, is wide open for debate, and while any former member of Firehouse 51 would be a welcome sight, one fan favorite character in particular needs to be there: CFD Deputy Commissioner (and former 51 chief) Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker).
Boden Would Bring a Full Circle Moment to ‘Chicago Fire’s 300th Episode
Walker’s last episode as Boden was a one-off guest star appearance in Season 13’s “Post-Mortem,” while his proper send-off as a series regular came with the Chicago Fire Season 12 finale “Never Say Goodbye,” in which he accepts the promotion to Deputy Commissioner. Yet it’s not so much when he left, but rather when he started: the very first episode in the very first season way back in 2012. That roster included Severide (Taylor Kinney), Herrmann (David Eigenberg), Mouch (Christian Stolte), and, yes, Joe Cruz.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey’s Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey’s
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What’s your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you’d give in an interview.
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who’s worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What’s yours?
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
You’ve made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
County General Hospital, Chicago
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital, Seattle
Grey’s Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
It’s messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, NJ
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You’re not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you’d deny it.
You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they’re smart enough to keep up.
The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Sacred Heart Hospital, California
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that’s not a flaw, it’s a survival strategy.
You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
Boden was there throughout Cruz’s ascension from hot-headed rookie driver to respected veteran leader at 51. He’s the one who had Cruz’s suspension reduced following an accident that saw the truck Cruz was driving T-bone a truck from another firehouse. He was there along with the rest of 51 to celebrate the birth of Cruz’s son in the 200th episode of the series. And Boden took the time to translate Otis’ (Yurly Sardarov) Russian dying words for Cruz – “Brat, ya budu s toboy, vsegda” (“Brother, I will be with you always”) – knowing how much it would mean to the hurting Cruz to hear them.
Long story short, Boden has a long history with Cruz that borders on a father/son dynamic, which Cruz himself alludes to in his words to Boden in “Never Say Goodbye”: “You made 51 a family, Chief, and this firehouse a home.” It simply wouldn’t feel right for someone with such a history with Cruz not to be there when he leaves, with that deep, sonorous voice doling out words of encouragement and love. It would also be fitting for Boden to appear now that Severide is the chief of Firehouse 51, a legitimate passing of the torch and bringing a full-circle moment to the series at the perfect time.
One Odds-On Favorite To Appear in ‘Chicago Fire’s 300th Episode Could Be Tricky
Of course, Boden isn’t the only face we haven’t seen around Firehouse 51 in some time, and truthfully, it would be great to catch up with the likes of Matt Casey (Jesse Spencer), Sylvie Casey (née Brett) (Kara Killmer), or Gabby Dawson (Monica Raymund). But the odds-on favorite to appear is the decidedly deceased Otis, after a stand-in casting call was put out for a character named “Otis,” with a description akin to that of actor Yurly Sardarov. How that happens, however, could be tricky.
There are three ways it could happen: a flashback to an unknown moment between them; Otis showing up in a dream; or with Cruz on death’s door, with Otis waiting to walk his friend past the pearly gates. Actor Brandon Larracuente, aka Vasquez, says that, “the writers of our show did a wonderful sendoff for Joe Miñoso,” which suggests that it likely isn’t the last option. It also could mean, God willing, that it’s something far more original than the last two trite options, both of which have been done to, well, death. At least a flashback has a chance to add something new, and plausible, to the story with someone old.
With a couple of episodes left between now and November 4, when episode 300 hits the air, a number of scenarios could play out that would justify however Cruz’s exit is approached. That would include justifying who it is that shows up for the momentous occasion, although a surprise appearance would definitely be far more enjoyable for long-time fans. An appearance from Boden, though, would be easy to explain and, more importantly, would fulfill what is needed for Cruz as he enters a new, unknown future outside the CFD: a reassuring voice from a respected father figure, Boden, reminding him that he isn’t alone.
Skip to content 
