[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Fire Country Season 3 finale, Episode 19 “A Change in the Wind” and Episode 20 “I’d Do It Again.”]
Heading into the two-hour Fire Country Season 3 finale, airing on Friday, April 25, one of the major questions is whether Jake (Jordan Calloway) will actually leave Station 42 for a captain position elsewhere with the ability to move up to battalion chief; everyone knows that’s Bode’s (Max Thieriot) at 42 once Vince (Billy Burke) eventually retires.
The promo, however, also teased the potential for a major death: Bode tries to fight his way inside a building about to collapse with his entire family inside. Jake is seen holding him back. Before seeing the episodes, we can only assume he means Vince, Sharon (Diane Farr), and Walter (Jeff Fahey) — a fire is threatening his care facility — but others (the town is Edgewater is very much a family) could be inside as well.
Read on for a complete breakdown of the two-part Season 3 finale.
“A Change in the Wind”
Finn (Blake Lee) remains very much a threat at the beginning of the two-part finale: Manny (Kevin Alejandro), who has submitted his Cal Fire application now that he’s out of Three Rock, spots his daughter Gabriela’s (Stephanie Arcila) stalker outside station 42 and follows him. He calls Bode and alerts the sheriff, but Finn gets away after, once he sees Manny and hurries to flee, he sets fire to a gas station. Bode, Manny, 42, and Three Rock (off their celebration that Tye White‘s Cole got parole) are able to put the fire out and rescue the civilian inside, but Bode walks away from the incident with an obvious limp. Vince sidelines him as a result of his twisted knee for the rest of the episode.
Station 42, meanwhile, holds a farewell breakfast for Jake, who is taking the job in Butte (for now? so much can change in these two episodes). But Vince is struggling to find a replacement and, as Sharon tells Jake, a mess about him leaving. No one can even clean his shoes, let alone fill them, Vince admits to his father, and Walter wonders why he’s even trying to find someone when Bode is right there. Sure, he’s a probie, but he thinks Vince can just do what he did with him and get him into shape in no time. Jake, too, thinks that Vince can train someone to get to his level, when the chief tells him there’s no finer captain than him. It’s at the end of this episode that another candidate (the obvious one) is said out loud, when Sharon calls Manny to aim for that open captain spot. But immediately after he has more important things on his mind…
Once Finn has been spotted, Vince tells Gabriela to go back to the Leones’, and Audrey (Leven Rambin) joins her, off Sharon’s orders. (Their friendship? One of the best parts of this second half of the season.) Too late, Gabriela realizes that Finn turned on location sharing on the phone he gave her (Audrey mentions a guy in her past who gave her a Fitbit to track her), and so by the time they act, he’s already in the house, armed with a taser. Gabriela’s gun is out of reach, on a side table near him. Finn keeps saying that he wants to protect her, and Gabriela says what she needs to try to talk him down, but he uses the taser on Audrey then tries to plan their escape. Gabriela and Finn end up fighting for the gun, but all we hear is the gunshot go off from Manny’s perspective outside. When he races in, Finn’s (seemingly) dead, Gabriela’s holding the gun, and Audrey is standing behind her.
Elsewhere, the topic of kids comes up for Eve (Jules Latimer) and Francine (Katie Findlay) while babysitting the former’s nephew. Francine wants one, while Eve gladly puts off the conversation until near the end of this episode. The good news? They love each other. The not-so-good news? Eve’s focus right now is Three Rock, and she doesn’t think she’s going to change her mind about having kids. Outside as they talk? The start of a fire approaching Three Rock…
That fire is part of the one that Sharon had been bracing for, from Zabel Ridge. While she heads out with 42 with the fire jumping the freeway, Bode remains benched with his injury. Well, that is, until Walter calls, seemingly not remembering Bode (calling him captain), to meet him out there with the fire on its way. “A Change in the Wind” ends with Bode grabbing his gear and heading out of 42.
“I’d Do It Again”
“This is going to be a long night,” Sharon says early on in the second of the two-part finale. There’s Manny focusing Gabriela and Audrey on saving Finn — he tells his daughter she doesn’t want to live with the guilt of killing him — and then, when it becomes clear an ambulance can’t get to them with all the fires around town, he decides they need to take him to the hospital themselves. He also wants Gabriela to say that he shot Manny, having come in and seen him endangering the two women. But his daughter reminds him he was the one to tell her to get her gun, which did protect them. Gabriela saying that the gun protected them makes us wonder: Did Audrey shoot Finn? And it turns out she did, having gotten her hands on the gun while the other two were fighting. After Finn threw Gabriela down, then began advancing on her, Audrey shot him. Gabriela had just taken the gun from her when Manny came in. When the fire blocks their road, Manny tries reaching Sharon, Vince, and finally, Jake, who tells him to link up with them at the care facility.
Meanwhile, the firefighters of 42 and Three Rock are busy and overwhelmed with multiple fires, including at the fire camp and Walter’s care facility. Bode arrives at the latter and helps his grandfather convince the workers there to start evacuating, which will take a lot of time, as everywhere starts losing power (and Three Rock’s water pump in the well fails as a result). Eve sends Francine away as soon as she notices the fire. Violet (Nesta Cooper) worries about Jake, who assures her he’ll be fine (the worst thing a first responder can say on a TV show) before having to hang up once the call comes in about Three Rock’s troubles.
But then Jake’s rerouted, just as Eve reports that Three Rock has lost multiple buildings, and so he tells her to get out if the fire reaches the trigger points: No building is worth their lives. The good news? Francine returns, with fire extinguishers to help. And Cole comes up with the idea to try a bucket brigade to try to save the fire camp. While that works for a short time, the fire reaches the second trigger point. Francine leaves before she can’t, and Eve pulls everyone back: It’s not worth risking losing one of their lives. They’ll clean up at a neighboring camp and then get back to it — and take a moment to celebrate that Cole is a free man since it’s after midnight.
Bode and Walter help to evacuate the care facility, but one of the latter’s friends isn’t outside and he thinks his hearing aids aren’t in so he didn’t hear the alarm. While Sharon orders Bode to stay outside and keep his grandfather with him (she wishes she could ground him), Walter insists that the fire burning inside him that they both have is all the backup they need. And with that, Bode grabs his gear. Once inside, Bode wonders if Walter got confused, if his friend exists, but when his grandfather recalls something he told him during drill day, that people hide in closets, they find Otto. Bode begins carrying him out, but then his knee gives out … and then their way out is blocked by the fire.
Once on scene, Sharon and Vince both head inside, so once Jake arrives, he establishes incident command. It takes a minute, but the Leones do link up inside, only for Walter, just as they’ve gotten to the exit, to turn back. Sharon and Vince insist Bode bring Otto out while they go after him. Bode, of course, wants to go back in, but Jake holds him back, even as he protests his whole family is inside. “Your whole family wouldn’t know a boundary if it hit them in the face,” Jake says, just before there’s a fire explosion inside.
Inside, Sharon and Vince have split up to look for Walter, and it’s his son who finds him, trying to ventilate an office. He even tries to give Vince orders, thinking he’s still battalion chief, but Vince pleads with his father to listen to him to get out — and Walter does, only to stop in the middle of the lounge to apologize for being a lousy father and acknowledge that Vince is a better one than he is. “We’re not going to die in here,” Vince insists, forcing him to move. Sharon calls out, seeing an exit. But…
Manny arrives on scene with Finn in the back of his car, and Audrey turns herself over to the police, declaring she shot him in self-defense. Gabriela has just filled Bode in on what happened when the care facility begins to collapse. Vince, Walter, and Sharon are trying to make their way out when another section seemingly collapses on top of them…
Bode, seeing what’s becoming of the building, tries to run back in, but Jake and other firefighters hold him back. The building collapses, and Bode collapses to the ground.
Fire Country can’t be about to kill off a Leone, right? What did you think of the Season 3 finale? Let us know in the comments section below.
Fire Country, Season 4, TBA, CBS
