Season 7 of The Chi arrived with a simple premise as the women took things over. After Douda’s long reign ended after his death, the South Side saw a shift in power. Female characters took to the centre and the twelve episodes led to a chaotic, heartbreaking and messy story. Here’s everything that went down before Season 8 arrives.
Nick’s new kingdom in The Chi season 7
The season opens with Alicia Daniels Lafayette in full grief-fueled war mode as her son Rob was murdered and left on her doorstep at the end of Season 6, and she is not waiting for justice to find her. She finds Nuck first, waking him from his sleep with a gun in his face, demanding answers. He lies smoothly, telling her that Rob was killed by Zay, his own cousin who worked for him and Alicia buys it. Shaad isn’t so sure, but Zay does have enough of a violent reputation to make the story stick. So Alicia does what Alicia does: she has Zay brought to her and kills him.
Meanwhile, Nuck consolidates his grip on the 63rd Street mob fast, making clear to everyone in the organization that the old rules are gone and his new ones are simple: stay quiet, stay humble, stay alive. He kills one of his own runners early in the season just for wearing too much jewelry. He brings young Bakari in close as his second-in-command, which puts the aspiring novelist in an impossible position almost immediately.
Tiff, still reeling from Rob’s death, discovers she is pregnant with his child. Nuck steps in to help Tiff get her lounge business off the ground, which draws her into his orbit in ways that grow complicated over time. Victor, Rob’s older brother, quietly becomes her steadiest support system and the two grow closer through the season, with the question of where Tiff’s loyalties and feelings really land becoming one of the season’s slow-burn threads. Jake’s secret affair with Tatiana explodes into a public scandal in the early episodes, straining his relationship with Jemma, who comes back to him looking for guidance about her next career moves.
Reg rises from the dead and chaos ensue
Nothing shook Season 7 up quite like the return of Reg, Jake’s older brother who had been presumed dead since Season 2. Reg survived through connections to Hannibal, who helped keep the secret of his whereabouts, and his return lands roughly six months into the season’s timeline, right when Nuck had managed to keep things relatively calm. Reg also sets his sights on Alicia, which is partly what Nuck uses to his advantage, redirecting Alicia’s vengeance toward Reg by hinting, through Bakari, that Reg might have been involved in Rob’s murder.
Emmett’s half-brother Damien becomes one of the season’s most destructive side characters. His gambling addiction resurfaces badly as he borrows money from Dom, from Bakari, and even from Jada, who is already battling the return of her cancer. He ends up owing Reg money he cannot pay back and Reg beats him senseless. Damien, humiliated and furious, storms down to Reg’s place to confront him and in the scuffle, a gunshot goes wide and hits Emmett in the chest. Emmett is rushed to the hospital and survives, but the shooting shakes the entire friend group. Victor and Jake kick Reg out of Jake’s apartment after that and Reg, now without a safe roof and surrounded by people who want him gone or dead, becomes even more unpredictable.
Jada, Emmett’s mother and one of the show’s original anchors, receives a terminal cancer diagnosis in Episode 9. Darnell, her husband, organizes a living funeral so that friends and family can celebrate her while she can still receive it. She gives Emmett her engagement ring and asks him to promise her that he will keep the family safe, even if that means eventually leaving Chicago. Emmett proposes to Kiesha in the wake of his own near-death and his mother’s diagnosis; and she turns him down gently, but they remain committed to each other and their growing family. Kiesha, managing Smokey’s while Emmett recovers, hires Shawnita, who proves to be one of the season’s most welcome additions.
How things wrap up with a double death and a double birth
The season builds toward a finale that tries to balance new life with devastating loss, and largely pulls it off. Alicia, growing impatient with Detective Toussaint’s slower legal approach, leans harder into her own plan. She recruits Candice, Reg’s girlfriend, to feed her information on his movements from the inside. Toussaint eventually manages to catch Reg in the middle of an attempted robbery and arrests him but Reg makes bail. He figures out quickly that Candice was the one who set him up at Alicia’s direction, and he retaliates by having her orchestrate a distraction that lures Alicia away from her house long enough for him to break in and rob it.
Meanwhile, Roselyn, Douda’s widow, returns to Chicago. She has found a posthumous letter from her late husband urging her to pursue whoever was responsible for his death and she goes straight to Nuck but he redirects her. He tells her that Alicia was the one who killed Douda and Roselyn, aware of the long hostility between Alicia and her brother’s murderer, finds the story believable. She shows up at Alicia’s home with a gun and as she tries to talk her way out of it, even admitting that she had planned to kill Douda but didn’t go through with it Roselyn shoots her repeatedly, killing her.
On the same night, Tiff goes into labor and she delivers Rob Jr. in a hospital elevator. Meanwhile, Kiesha labors at home, surrounded by Emmett, a doula, and eventually Jada herself, who insists on being brought over to meet her grandchild before she passes. She holds the baby girl, and Emmett names her Jada. Within a day of that moment, Jada dies. The season ends with new life on one side and enormous loss on the other.
Edited by Nibir Konwar