[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the One Chicago crossover: Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago P.D.‘s “Into the Trenches.”]
No one does a crossover like One Chicago — especially the major events. This franchise has a way of making a three-parter across Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago P.D. (the order for this year’s) seamless, cinematic, thrilling from start to finish, a must-watch, and a showcase of what each series does best. Such is the case with “Into the Trenches.” This one feels like a movie.
A gas explosion brings firefighters, paramedics, doctors, and police officers to the scene from the start, and this crossover does a great job of highlighting the relationships across the shows, including ones you might not even have known about or expected. Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) and Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger), trapped underground while her husband, Severide (Taylor Kinney), and his fiancée, Burgess (Marina Squerciati), worry up top and try to find a way to rescue them and solve the case? Just what we needed. Dr. Charles (Oliver Platt) calming down and reassuring Mouch (Christian Stolte) as he worries about his wife Platt (Amy Morton) in surgery? Give us more!
Archer (Steven Weber) donning turnouts to go underground with Pascal (Dermot Mulroney), Severide, Herrmann (David Eigenberg), and Mouch? Worth it for the exchange he and Ruzek share once back on street level when the officer insists he doesn’t need medical treatment. “Are you a doctor?” Archer asks. “Are you?” Ruzek retorts, looking at him in the turnouts.
Below, we recap the major moments of the crossover.
Does Platt die after being shot?
Early on, we get hints of tension between Mouch and Platt; he missed out on a celebration she’d put together for the two of them for his lieutenant promotion … or so he thinks. After she brushes him off at the site of the gas explosion, he realizes the plans had been for her birthday, which he’d forgotten. Then, when Platt, Ruzek and a former officer-turned-security guard, Bates (Jennifer Regan), chase after the offenders who set the fire that caused the gas explosion, Platt is shot multiple times in the back!
Peter Gordon/NBC
Mouch immediately rushes inside to find her after the call goes out over the radio. He, Severide, and Herrmann — whom Pascal tries to keep back to get an overview of what it will mean when he’s one day battalion chief — refuse to leave when the chief gives the order to evacuate with concerns of the building’s foundation giving out. Mouch finds his wife bleeding out in an elevator, and he pleads with her not to leave him in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Once at Med, Platt flatlines — and Stolte delivers one of his best performances of the show as he can only stand by and watch as Ripley (Luke Mitchell) and Lenox (Sarah Ramos) try to save her, ultimately using an experimental treatment by cooling her body all the way down to give them time to patch up the bullet holes. The hope is that they can then warm her back up. Upon realizing that this has only been extensively studied in animals without much success, Mouch is understandably upset: “Tell me you didn’t just kill my wife,” he demands of Ripley.
That’s when Charles sits down with him and assures him that Ripley is a good doctor and Platt is strong. It’s to Charles that Mouch admits that part of him needs to be back at the scene of the gas explosion helping to dig Kidd out. He thinks it makes him a horrible husband, but the doctor argues that’s why Platt married him. “Do I need to explain your own wife to you?” Charles asks, making us want scenes with him and Platt stat!
As Mouch sits with the unconscious Platt, he says that one of the things he loves most about her is he has no idea what will come out of her mouth. “If only I’d met you sooner, maybe I’d have figured you out by now,” he admits, emotional. “Oh, baby, you better not quit like this on me. Who the hell would I be left to talk to?” Fortunately, he doesn’t have to find out: Platt’s going to be okay (but will need months of physical therapy), and once she comes to, she not only passes along key information to Voight (Jason Beghe) that helps them find a way to help those trapped underground, but she also sends Mouch to help.
How do Severide and Burgess handle Kidd and Ruzek trapped underground?
One thing’s clear after the day Kidd has: She needs that vacation with Severide, even if it’s just a long weekend. It’s all hands on deck — including Frost (Darren Barnet), on a ride-along with Violet (Hanako Greensmith) and Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) — when there are reports of multiple underground explosions. CPD is on scene to help control the area, then try to chase down the arsonists after Severide identifies the source of a fire in a server room, while the firefighters, paramedics, and doctor help with rescues and triage.
Elizabeth Sisson/NBC
Kidd leads Truck to a train disabled below; she sends Carver (Jake Lockett) up with some of the passengers, but a tunnel collapse traps her below with the rest. Ruzek, having chased one of the offenders into the tunnel, joins her on the train. Though Pascal and Severide (“Stella Kidd, report back right now!”) try to reach her over the radio, there’s no response. (Kinney playing the desperation of not being able to reach his wife all crossover? Among his best of the show.)
The good news is it doesn’t take long for Ruzek to get a signal and call Burgess, whose relief is apparent. (Squerciati shines playing the balance of worried fiancée and determined detective.) But there’s not much to celebrate yet: There are injured people on the train (Archer talks Kidd through treating them first over the phone, then morse code with lights on a panel), and Platt’s shooter could very well be among them. Plus, they’re quickly running out of air and there doesn’t seem to be any way to get to the injured civilians. (Severide is willing to dig them out by hand pretty much, but there’s just no safe place to do so.)
Though Kidd can tell immediately that something’s going on with Ruzek, it’s not until she calls him out on having his hand on his gun when he got on the train (and that she needs to know everything) that he fills her in on Platt being trapped and the offender likely being with them. There’s even time for moments of connection for both couples — Burgess offers to get Makayla out of school so Ruzek can talk to her (he says no, they’ll have dinner together) and passes along a message from Severide for Kidd (“you were right, we have to make the time,”) referring to their attempt to take a vacation. (She declines to hop on the phone with him, wanting to stay focused.)
Among the offenders identified is a woman who was badly burned during the initial rescue in the sub-basement where the server room was located. But when Burgess and Voight want to wake her to question her to find a possible way to the train — the offenders used those tunnels to get in — Lenox refuses because it would jeopardize the woman’s health and she took an oath. She does, however, give Burgess a lead just as she’s leaving the hospital: The victim has mesothelioma, and in most cases, those patients are swarmed by lawyers eager to sue a place of employment if there’s workplace exposure. That gets them a name (Margaret), and they soon realize that her daughter has been looking for her. But her daughter refuses to give them anything until she can see her mom.
Meanwhile, Ruzek stumbles across a man in the tunnels who’s wearing the same jumpsuit the offenders were; Ray claims he was down there the entire time and isn’t the shooter, but Ruzek cuffs him to a pole inside the train. He has a man on the train who can read morse code send up Ray’s name for a background check, but despite him coming back clean, the man relays that the message is just a check-in about the injured passengers. A teen on the train, however, takes note and alerts Ruzek that she knew enough morse code to know he lied.
Meanwhile, thanks to a tip from Platt about a motel key card she found in an offender’s pocket before she was shot, Intelligence is able to find where they were staying and blueprints of the tunnels. The rescue team — Severide, Pascal, Herrmann, Mouch, and Archer — break through into the tunnel just as the offender on the train has taken Kidd hostage and forced Ruzek to give up his gun. But they’re able to subdue him, and it’s the offender who’s shot in the struggle. With another collapse imminent, they quickly get everyone out.
Severide and Kidd share a moment once on street level again (a long weekend sounds good), and Burgess joins Ruzek in the ambulance after Archer forces him in to get checked out at the hospital for his injured arm.
Who’s behind the explosions? Who shot Platt?
The offenders stole a data storage drive with city employees’ pension funds totaling $250 million; Ruzek’s arm gets cut going back to grab it from next to the offender’s body in the tunnel. (With that, the drive is going into evidence and everything that happened will be made public: all the cancer patients who were blocked from treatment due to lawyers and the retirement funds that were almost lost.) Among those offenders is Bates — and she was the one who shot Platt from behind, Voight realizes after they determine there was an inside man to give the offenders everything they needed to know about security. Platt and Bates came up together, he reminds her. They made a vow to the city, as police, and she shot her in the back.
Bates argues that the city screwed over people like Margaret — and her. She, too, has mesothelioma, and she knew the attorneys would fight her lawsuit like they did Margaret’s. She asks Voight to give her a moment alone with her gun since she’s dying anyway, but he refuses. She broke the vow they made to protect the city.
What did you think of the crossover? Let us know in the comments section below.
Chicago Med, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC
Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC
Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC
