Torres is Back and Better Than Ever: Here's Why Chicago P.D. Fans Can’t Get Enough!

The penultimate episode of Chicago P.D.'s Season 12, "Open Casket," saw Reid (Shawn Hatosy) rain hell down on the Intelligence Unit after foiling their plans to expose his criminal activities.

That included taking Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) in for having been romantically involved with a CI, Gloria Perez (Yara Martinez), the illegal act that got Voight and his team on Reid’s radar in the first place. Her death in Season 12 sent Torres on a downward spiral he couldn’t get out of, turning the character into someone unrecognizable. But his brief time in jail seems to have done Torres good, and with Reid gone, the charges against him have been cleared. Torres is back, and I, for one, am thrilled.

Torres Joined the Intelligence Unit in Season 9 of 'Chicago P.D.'

Dante Torres first appeared in Chicago P.D. in the 18th episode of Season 9 as a rookie recruit who gets paired with Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer), who has agreed to help Trudy (Amy Morton) with the new recruits. Trudy sums him up as "a quiet kid, and will either make a good cop or turn out to be a total psycho."

He comes in while the team is working to bring down drug kingpin Javier Escano (José Zúñiga), and, although he oversteps a few times, his help proves invaluable in their pursuit of Escano.

It took time for Torres to gain the trust of the squad, and with good reason. As a teenager, Torres was a member of a gang, and then, at the age of 14, he was sent to juvenile detention for nearly killing his mother's abusive second husband, leaving him in a coma. That act was complicated by having tried to do the right thing six times previously regarding his stepfather's abusive ways, as he called the police with no success. But his time in jail changed his life, prompting him to burn off his gang tattoos, find religion, and vow to become a police officer, specifically one unlike those he had come to know that turned a blind eye and never sought to help those like himself. After helping the team as an undercover agent in the first few episodes of Season 10, Torres became a full member of the team in Episode 4, filling in Halstead's place on the team.

Thanks to Aguilar, Torres quickly became a well-rounded favorite. He was quiet, street-smart, and had a heart for the victimized and forgotten. More importantly, on a team led by the morally-gray Voight (Jason Beghe), Torres was a character with a clearly defined sense of right and wrong and was a moral compass for a group that straddled that line in pursuit of justice. Gloria Perez perhaps says it best. After learning that he was a cop, she said, "I didn't know you were a cop, and I'm really good at reading people... you're not like them. You seem like something different." His disappearance at the end of Season 10, not reappearing again until four episodes into Season 11, was explained as him taking care of his ailing mother. How can you not like a guy who takes care of his mama? That return, however, started Torres on a path that led to a dramatic descent.

Torres Gets Caught Up in a Bad Romance in 'Chicago P.D.'

A random heroin bust gives Torres and Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) ties to Rafael Perez (Julio Cesar Cedillo), a major drug trafficker who has evaded authorities for years. It's a chance to finally take him down, and Torres volunteers to go undercover as a drug runner. He's soon sent on a run with Rafael's wife Gloria, and discovers that not only has she been skimming money from her husband, but there's evidence that Rafael has been abusive to her. He sees it as an opportunity to turn her into an informant, and reveals his real identity as a cop. He appeals to her desire to escape the life she's in, and opens up to her about how he understands, having helped his mom out of her abusive relationship. It's a slippery slope, and Torres starts to slide, developing an emotional bond with Gloria that develops into something more.

Heading into Season 12, that relationship is outed to the Intelligence Unit, placing the team in a very precarious position. It is, in a word, a betrayal — one of those clear-cut lines you just don't cross. It strains all of his relationships and places his own career in peril. After Gloria's death, it all comes crashing down. He returns to work, but Reid goes after him, using what he knows about Torres to put Voight and team under his thumb. Torres was less a member of the team and more a liability, and he simply became lost, even turning his back on the religion that had grounded him for much of his life.

Seeing him emerge from that darkness in the Season 12 finale of Chicago P.D. gives me hope that we have Torres back. He walks into the church for the Burzek wedding, and very subtly you see that his head is higher than it has been in ages, not weighed down by the weight of his shame before God, but lifted by being given a second chance. He has relationships with the team that are going to take time to heal, but the Torres we knew before is honest to a fault, and if that Torres is back, then we know his sincerity will win out. The recent past has given Aguilar some great material to work with, pushing his talents as an actor to make us care about a character we should, by rights, give up on, but enough's enough. Torres — the quiet, just defender of the forgotten — is back, and I can't wait to see what a refocused Torres has to bring to a team that's been through hell and come out the other side.