Did Voight overstep and ruin his personal life?
Chicago P.D.'s Season 12 finale, "Vows," is all about two things: the contrast between Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) and Deputy Chief Reid (Shawn Hatosy), and the long-awaited wedding of Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick Flueger).
But the Voight and Reid issue was more than just two dirty cops taking turns at each other, culminating in Voight essentially signing Reid's death warrant at the hands of a drug dealer's son out for revenge. Instead, the show played with the idea that the two are very much alike, and yet deep down, they are not alike. Or at least, that's what Hank Voight would want to believe. That's what ASA Nina Chapman (Sara Bues) tricked herself into thinking. But who is the real Voight, and is he really someone who can one day be more than the blunt instrument he often makes himself into? The answer is not that simple.
For a moment, as Voight chose the team over any nascent romantic relationship between himself and Chapman in the Season 12 finale, it seemed like it might be. "You're worse than me," a dying Reid told Voight after Voight literally set the stage for him to get murdered. "I don't get more," Voight told Chapman later, not a justification or an excuse, just a fact. And yet the setup for more is there.
On top of that, there's the wedding that felt like both a culmination and a new beginning for two characters who have been part of the fabric of this show, together and apart, since the beginning. One relationship ends, another one begins anew. The television lifecycle continues.
Below, Chicago P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan breaks down Deputy Chief Reid as a mirror to Hank Voight, whether we'll see ASA Chapman again, and what we can expect from Kim Burgess and Adam Ruzek now that they're happily married.
Adam and Kim are now married, but this is obviously not the end of the story. Where do you see them going forward?
Gwen Sigan: It's really like the beginning of their family life and just a new iteration of them. So, I'm excited. I'm excited to write for them as a married couple. I think it's always interesting to see married couples on television. I think so many have done it well, where you get to see the work and you get to see the issues, but you also get to see just what that relationship is after that many years together, and what it means and how they sort of face things together now.
So, I'm excited. I think it'll be a challenge and it'll be interesting, but I also think it's going to open up a lot of different, different avenues. And also, you know, they have that sort of bedrock. So, what else could we do with them on the job that, you know, feels different now that they have this stability in their personal life?
This episode is very much about Voight. Near the end of the hour, there's a moment where Reid tells him, "You're worse than me." Before, he'd told Voight that they were two sides of the same coin. Were you trying to build them as two really similar people, so he would be a mirror to Voight in many ways?
Sigan: That's exactly what we wanted to play with. I think from the beginning of the season, our theme this year was really identity and self. And so, we wanted to look at all of that and look at who Voight is. And I think for the first time, he's maybe asking himself a little bit of that question too, [and] he's not an introspective person at all. So, the fact that he almost died in Season 11, I think, made him the most introspective he's going to get. And this season was completely about that.
We saw Reid as this fun-house mirror version of Voight and set up that Voight was going to kind of understand him for the first half of the season and then realize, oh no, he's so much worse than I thought. Everything about him is twisted to kind of fit into this philosophy he's created for himself. But the interesting thing is, I think that Reid could have argued that same thing about Voight. And so hopefully by the end of this season, the audience can kind of be asking themselves the same question of, is Voight the same as Reid? Which I think is just an interesting place to be.
Voight's decision to go after Reid means sacrificing a possible relationship with Nina Chapman. Did you see it as something he was conscious of?
Sigan: Yeah, I think he absolutely knew. And I think this season was the first time where he ever realized maybe I do want more. Maybe I want that life again. And I think you can look at it and think it was such small steps. He would have Chapman sleeping on his couch and like, they never kissed. They never did anything like that. But to me, that was the most intimate relationship he'd had in a long time. And those tiny steps for him were really big.
And I think he knew absolutely that by doing what I'm about to do, I will lose her. And to me, when he tells her "I don't get more," I think he's saying I can't have more. I don't think he knows how to and I think at that moment, he thinks he's OK with it. But I think we'll see that he might not be. That it was a real cost and a real consequence of his actions. And I think emotionally that has to have some fallout for him.
Shawn Hatosy and Jason Beghe, Chicago P.D.
Is this specific to ASA Chapman, or is Voight just now looking for more in general? Is she a character you want to continue to explore?
Sigan: I think it's both. I definitely never thought that by this finale that we would have a character like her at all. I love Sara Bues, the actress, and the character. I think she is so, so needed in our show. It's so nice to have this foil for him. And so, I definitely think she'll be back.
And emotionally, it's a fallout. But professionally, too. I think it's really interesting because they're working together. She's not going to leave Chicago because of this guy, there's no way. So that will be very interesting. I don't think he's realized how much he has relied on her professionally, which has been a lot. And so, what that will look like is something we want to explore.
Voight also relied on the team a lot more at the end of the season than we usually see him do. This is a big change in the dynamics, because he's not so isolated now. Is this something that you foresee developing even more?
Sigan: He definitely has always been such a father figure to the team. But I think this year, we kind of wanted it to be a little more peer-like. I think we got that, I think it did seem like he was relying on the team, trusting the team a lot. And in that, just innately, their relationships evolved. Especially when you see that he actually tells the team what's going on, when they kind of confront him and ask him: "Tell us the truth, and we'll help you."
His whole line is always "tell me the truth, so I can lie for you." And they're basically throwing it back at him, which I loved, because he decided in that moment to tell them, which is not very Voight-like, and so there's definitely an evolution there. And I think it's something that we can continue to see, because to see Voight have to rely on the team is interesting. And I think it would be a nice kind of evolution of their relationship.
Chicago P.D. will return next next fall. All episodes are now streaming on Peacock.
