How ‘Chicago P.D.’ Reshapes the Unit in Season 13
[This story contains spoilers from the second episode of Chicago P.D. season 13, “Open Wounds.”]
When Chicago P.D. returned with season 13, the ghosts and traumas from last season’s continued to take their toll on the members of the Intelligence Unit. The premiere saw Sergeant Hank Voight’s (Jason Beghe) team trying to put the pieces back together after being disbanded, fragilely put back together again via Sarg’s same tactics of threats and deceit.
In Thursday’s second episode, “Open Wounds,” the police procedural from Universal Television and Wolf Entertainment focused on Officer Dante Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar), who appears to be a ship without a rudder. Torres has lost his faith in God and is numb to everything after falling in love with a drug dealer girlfriend last season, and failing to save her life when she refused to get out of the business. Last season, he also relived abuse he experienced as a teenager while working a case in a juvenile detention center.
The only way Torres can feel anything now is by inflicting some sort of pain upon himself. He does this by beating punching bags until the gloves bust, or receiving a deep cut to his arm while working a case. Torres removes some of the stitches and inserts his fingers into the “open wound” until he extracts unbearable pain to feel something. The tense episode was directed by Jesse Lee Soffer, who once played former Intelligence Unit Officer Jay Halstead.
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In the season 13 premiere, Chicago P.D. viewers saw that Voight’s elite, highly effective Intelligence Unit of five highly skilled, deep cover officers were still in disarray one month after the shocking murder of the team’s nemesis, Deputy Chief Charlie Reid (Shawn Hatosy), in the season 12 finale.
Although the police department can’t prove that Voight (or members of his squad) had anything to do with Reid’s demise at the hands of the son of one of the city’s top late gang leaders, brass still felt that the Intelligence Unit was a lightning rod that no senior official would in his right mind bring back together. So, Voight along with officers Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick Flueger) were sent back to uniform street duty. Det. Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) and Torres were still without their badges while being investigated for allegedly lying to their superiors, and due to misconduct regarding the latter’s drug-dealing love interest. The newest member of the squad from last season, Officer Kiana Cook (Toya Turner), meanwhile, simply decided to take a different position with another police district.
But with the help of a rogue Alcohol, Tabacco and Firearms agent last week — Eva Imani played by Arienne Mandi) — who decided to quit the ATF after Voight saved her life and helped wrap up one her dangerous cases of illegal high powered firearms on the streets, Voight is given ammunition to do what he does best: blackmail a police higher up with evidence of wrongdoings, unless the Intelligence Unit is put back together again. It works, and Imani decides to join the unit, as she feels a sense of commonality with Voight and his tactics.
Throughout this season, showrunner Gwen Sigan tells The Hollywood Reporter that the characters of Chicago P.D. will still be feeling the repercussions of Reid’s death, as reconfiguration of the unit tries to find its footing and flow again under Voight’s leadership.
“Some of the things we assumed would go away when Reid died did not go away,” Sigan says. “There were some repercussions there. But we do end up with a new member and some new dynamics within the relationships.”
As the new season progresses, one of the hanging chads from last season is the status of Voight’s relationship with Assistant State Attorney Nina Chapman (Sara Bues), who figured out during last season’s finale that Voight had a hand in setting up Reid’s murder.
“It’s certainly a turning point in their relationship,” Sigan says. “It was the first time, I think, he told her exactly how he felt, and she actually listened to it. I can’t imagine someone like Chapman didn’t take that as, ‘Okay, it’s not going to happen, then I’m going to move on and go do something else.’ I think it’s interesting to see this season with Voight without her for a bit. I think he did, in some ways, take that relationship for granted, not only for what it was personally, but also professionally. They had a good relationship and she was able to make so many cases happen for our unit; she was so supportive. We do see some of the fallout from that, and in the beginning of the season we can say she’s actually not speaking to him.”
But Beghe doesn’t believe Voight will have much regret over the ending of the relationship/friendship.
“He lives with what he is,” Beghe explains. “But I can tell you there is a moment in an episode that we’re getting ready to shoot where I need to get a warrant, and based on my relationship that I had with her professionally, there’s a good chance I could have gotten the warrant that I couldn’t secure with a more traditional S.A. I won’t speculate and pine away with ‘what ifs,’ but I tend to doubt it. That’s all I can say for sure.”
So it seems love and close friendships of the opposite sex may be sparse for Voight this season, but will the stinging words that Reid left with him before his last breath in season 12 continue to linger? Reid told Voight right before going to the other side, “You’re worse than me.”
Beghe doubts that will be an issue for Voight this season, too.
“Part of the big difference between Reid and Voight is that Reid saw himself as doing wrong,” Beghe says. “I think Voight sees himself as doing right. Reid saw them as similar, but Voight saw them as different. They might have had similar violence and motivations, but at their core, I think they are different people.”
Chicago P.D. releases new episodes Wednesdays at 10 p.m. on NBC, streaming next day on Peacock.
