Spoiler Alert: The following reveals major plot points from tonight’s Chicago P.D.’s Season 12 finale.
NBC‘s Chicago P.D. fans are in for a double treat tonight as the Season 12 finale addresses two major plot points left unresolved for two happily ever afters.
Let’s start with Voight (Jason Beghe) and his tumultuous relationship with Reid (Shawn Hatosy), which heats up and boils over in tonight’s episode, “Vows.” I assure you, the vows were not between Voight and Reid, but we can discuss that later.
Voight is fed up with Reid and launches a full-on attack in “Open Casket.” Voight isn’t here for the intimidation, and he won’t have his team threatened. The time is now to bring Reid down, and Voight is willing to do whatever it takes to get the closure he needs. Therein lies the problem.
Voight has come a long way from the man and leader fans got to know in earlier seasons. He’s put in hard work, doing things by the book, and focusing on his family at the 21st District. There’s even been a potential love interest making herself available, even though she knows he’s a complicated man. When Reid enters the picture, he challenges Voight at every corner, pushing him to the edge of no return. Learning the team’s big secret that Dante (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) had slept with his CI, and that Burgess (Marina Squerciati) covered it up, put Reid in a position where Voight had to do whatever he asked or risk their jobs. But his compliance wouldn’t last forever.
Shawn Hatosy as Deputy Chief Reid
When he learned last week that Voight was investigating his dirty dealings, Reid kept his end of the bargain. He arrested and suspended Dante and Burgess, then dismantled Voight’s team. At this point, Voight is unstoppable. He is desperate to decimate this man who is ruining their lives. No stone goes unturned, but the boss is faced with multiple challenges. Someone he was counting on to help expose who exactly Reid is dies in an unfortunate accident.
Along the way, ASA Chapman (Sara Bues) practically begs Voight to let her help, but he isn’t listening. He knows he has a limited amount of time to get Reid, and every legal avenue he’s tried has fallen through. As the saying goes, a cornered dog will bite. And that’s exactly where we find Voight in the finale. So, he orchestrates a situation where a dead drug boss’s son kills Reid in retaliation for the murder of his father. Voight is clean, and the team is free of him at last. Or is he?
Voight may have cleaned things up to look as if the series of unfortunate events just came to be, and not like he was the puppet master pulling all the strings. But at what cost? To start with, Chapman wasn’t just looking at him, but she was seeing him for who he is. She figures out all the illegal manipulations he used to beat his foe, and she is not impressed. The air is thick with lies and schemes, and not even Voight can get out of this. In fact, he doesn’t even try.
Showrunner Gwen Sigan teases where Voight goes from here.
“I believe this one’s gonna have a big impact on Voight — he was evolving, changing over the last few seasons, and we set out this year to test that evolution; just how much had he changed? Were his instincts still there? What was he willing to give up to satisfy those instincts if all else failed? In the finale, we saw him succumb. I’m hoping next season we can find a fresh way to explore the emotional fallout and the cost for him,” she told Deadline via email.
Regarding his relationship with Chapman, she added, “Voight certainly crossed a moral line that she can’t support. He also made it very clear to her the boundary in their relationship. There would be no ‘more,’ and she heard him this time. I think Chapman always knew on some level that Voight is incapable of an intimate relationship, but she cared for him anyway — she was willing to give more than receive until that finale. Moving forward, their relationship is going to be complicated/messy — it needs to be professional now, but I don’t think Voight was even fully conscious of how much she was there for him and what it meant to him. He’ll be feeling that change and loss of companionship for sure.”
Sounds more like a setback than anything else, so hopefully, Voight wants to get back to being the man he grew to be and not be defined by his mistakes.
Happy ending #1.
(l-r) Marina Squerciati as Officer Kim Burgess, Patrick John Flueger as Officer Adam Ruzek
The highlight of the night’s finale was the long-awaited Burgess and Ruzek nuptials that went off without a hitch. Things were close to being canceled with the bride under investigation and Reid calling the shots, but everything worked out as it should. My only complaint is that we didn’t spend more time with them on their big day. It felt like everything went so fast! OG readers have been waiting for this wedding for many seasons, and it felt like a tiny blip.
The celebration was a bit of a crossover, there were characters there from other shows, like Mouch (Christian Stolte), who escorted his beautiful wife Trudy (Amy Morton) to the celebration.
Regarding their future, Sigan shared, “Moving forward, it will be fun to write the new dynamic of a married couple — it’s one of very few we’ve had on the show; I think that steadiness and commitment will be nice to write.”
