'Chicago P.D.' Boss Teases a Voight and Reid Showdown in the Season 12 Finale

Showrunner Gwen Sigan also previews the upcoming 'Burzek' wedding in the finale of the hit NBC police drama.

Last week's episode of Season 12 of Chicago P.D. would have been such a great cliffhanger that it was surprising that it wasn’t the finale! In it, Deputy Chief Reid (Shawn Hatosy) realized that blackmailing Voight (Jason Beghe) wasn’t working, so he used the full power of his office and had Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) arrested for his affair with a CI. He took Burgess’ (Marina Squerciati) badge and gun for knowing about the affair and covering it up, and then he broke up the Intelligence Unit.

But showrunner Gwen Sigan didn’t want to wait to see the story played out in Season 13. So she took it one step further for the finale and kept the dramatic interaction between the two men going.

“We always looked at it as there's so much juice in this storyline. And to me, it was really the Voight of it all,” she told Parade. “Voight versus Reid and what that meant to Voight character-wise, his identity versus Reid's identity. So, I wanted to keep it going. It felt like an old-school cliffhanger where you have to wait for the rest of the season. But to me, it felt like the story was continuing in that moment, and I wanted to see Voight's reaction so badly to it and where that would take him emotionally and morally. So, it just felt like the appropriate choice.”

The question remains whether or not Voight can take down Reid. It’s looking like Voight may have actually lost this time around. His unit has been dismantled, so he has no police powers to put into play to investigate Reid, and Reid has a lot of allies in high places. So, it’s looking like curtains for Torres and Burgess, the end of their police careers.

“Torres was arrested, but there's no charges made yet,” Sigan replied when asked if there’s a chance that Torres won’t be able to beat the rap even if Voight somehow miraculously brings Reid down. “All that IAD has compiled at Reid’s direction is still there. And so, Voight's really betting that if he can take away Reid’s credibility and show that Reid is actually this very corrupt individual that's trying to take Voight and the team down, that he can hopefully negate those charges. So, he's taking a gamble.”

In the meantime, Burgess wants to call off her wedding to Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger). It somehow doesn’t feel right to her to celebrate her personal happiness with everything that’s going down. But since we’ve already seen the wedding photos, we know it happens, and it also happens to be the first wedding on Chicago P.D.  to take place in a church.

“We talked about it a lot in the writers' room,” Sigan says of the decision. “It seemed like this was the most them, this felt like Ruzek and Burgess. It felt like they would have a real wedding. It's been 12 years in the making. And I always thought Burgess would want something a bit traditional just so that her family and her friends and her loved ones could be there, and certainly so Michaela [Ramona Edith Williams] could be there, and I think Ruzek was happy to go along with it. We imagined that the church that they get married in is the church in Canaryville that he went to as a little boy, so it just felt right.”

Burgess and Ruzek may not be the only ones with romance in their lives. Earlier this season ASA Nina Chapman (Sara Bues) told Voight that she had feelings for him, and she continued that exploration in the penultimate episode, asking him about his late wife and if he missed having a relationship like that in his life.

“She said she has feelings for him, but I also think she's fascinated by him and wants to understand him because she cares for him,” Sigan said. “So, she's asking that in a very genuine way, not to lead him to be like, ‘I can see it.’ I think Voight saying that he didn't miss it is a true statement, but I think in the past season, I don't know if that's so true. For years and years, that's been the case. But I think we saw him really open himself up a little bit more this season, evolve a bit this season. He was dealing with this idea of death that had come at him in the Season 11 finale, and so I think it wasn't as true in the present moment.”