[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Chicago P.D. Season 11 premiere “Unpacking.”]
Intelligence needs to find a replacement for Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) in the Chicago P.D. Season 11 premiere, but Voight (Jason Beghe) refuses.
And while his reaction makes it seem like he may not be ready to replace a fallen team member, it’s simply because he doesn’t want anyone except for Ruzek, who did survive that bullet in the Season 10 finale and is now trying to make his way back, but it’s going to take some time. Elsewhere in the premiere, to say Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) is struggling would be an understatement. Not only are she and Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer, who left last season) getting a divorce (she’s the petitioner), but she misreads someone she thinks is the prime suspect while riding along with the crisis prevention team.
When Voight checks on her in her new place at the end of the episode (boxes are everywhere, though she’s been there for six months), Upton tells him, “I’m good. I’ll be good … I’m always the calmest person in the room; I’ll get that back.” She knows she got angry with the wrong person during the investigation, and lately, “if I’m not shutting down, I’m angry, and I don’t know why. I’m not mad at Jay. I’m really not. I should be good. I should be moving on by now. We all should be moving on. But I’m not, and I don’t know why. I wasn’t paying attention with Cam. And I can’t be a good cop if I’m angry. I don’t know what to do. Tell me what to do. … I’ll do it. Anything. How do I fix it?”
He doesn’t have an answer for her.
TV Insider turned to executive producer Gwen Sigan for the scoop on what’s next as Ruzek recovers, with Upton’s struggles (Spiridakos is leaving, but she’s there the whole season), and more.
Ruzek’s alive, fortunately, but it’s a slow recovery and journey back for him. What does that look like, and how will he handle it?
Gwen Sigan: Yeah, not the best. [Laughs] Yeah, it’s fun. We tried to keep it pretty realistic. So in Chicago, they have this retread process, which is basically if you get shot, if you get injured, it takes a while to get back on the job. You have to pass all the physical tests, you have to pass all of the written tests. You have to get tested again on protocol and how the job goes. It’s a long process, and physically for him, with where he was shot, with how he was shot, he is not immediately physically okay. In these six months, he’s been rehabbing. He’s been trying to get back, and you see in the first episode that he hasn’t made it back yet.
Lori Allen/NBC
The second episode is a Ruzek episode, and we see what these six months have been like for him not on the job and how he’s been handling it, which, like I said, he has not been handling it the best. This is a man that I think needs the job. I think the job actually makes him a better person. It puts a lot of his energy and the adrenaline he needs into something healthy for him, like something a little motivating for him. So to see him without it and spinning out and not knowing where he stands, not knowing if he’s going to be back, not understanding what his life is going to look like, he’s definitely in a shaky place, and we get to see Burgess [Marina Squerciati] be there with him through it and try to support him through it and see him go through that journey in Episode 2.
What is Burgess and Ruzek’s relationship like this season? They finally seemed to be on the same page at the end of last season.
Yeah. They went through hell last season. Their relationship has been so fun to play because they started so young when they started on the show and were in love, and then how it’s shifted. They are together, they’re committed, they are each other’s rocks. They have made this decision to go for it and to really go for it, to be in this space of “this is what we want, and we’re going to work at it, and we’ll get through anything together.” So, of course, we will see that. We’ll see them now that they are together in this family unit; what does it look like when someone’s going through something? How do you support them when they don’t even know how they need your support? How do you get there?
And it’s a nice way to show their growth because when they were younger, they didn’t have the toolkit to do that and get through those things. I think a lot of times when they’d be hit with something; the answer would be then we gotta pull away from each other. But now it’s the complete opposite. You’re hit with something, you go into the other person, and you try to get through it together. That’s what we’ll see this year.
But on the other side, there’s Upton and Halstead, who are getting a divorce, and it seems to be heading that way. But what made her take that step? And while she says she’s not mad at him, at least part of her has to be, right?
Yeah. I think she’s struggling. I think it’s that reality of it was kind of a shock to her. I think that neither of them knew that this is how that would end — at least for now — that this is where their relationship would go. So I think she’s angry. I think what I see that anger as is more internal anger. It’s faced inward at this point, and where it’s coming out externally, it’s coming out at the job. And it’s also kind of triggering a lot of other things that have built up in her and a lot of other things that I don’t think she’s ever dealt with. This is a woman prone to abandonment issues because of what she’s been through in the past and because of her family life. And so it’s going to be really interesting to see that struggle this year and to see that it really becomes not so much about Jay, it’s more so about her and realizing some things about herself that she needs to work on and work through so that she can get to the other side and so that she can see that maybe there’s a whole world out there for Upton that she hasn’t been able to explore yet. So I’m excited. I think it’s going to be a really nice arc for her this year.
Is the crisis prevention that she did in the premiere part of her arc this season?
We won’t see more of that unit at this moment. There are no plans to see more of that unit in particular. But I think it definitely indicates this idea of caring — caring for yourself, caring for other people in a way that maybe you hadn’t done before. It signifies that that’s where she’s headed.
So, will figuring that out be part of her exit storyline? She talks to Voight about not knowing how to be a good cop with how she’s feeling right now.
Yes. That’s definitely part of her arc this year is figuring that out, looking internally. We’ve got some fun ways to do that. It is always hard to tell a mental health story or to tell an internal story on a show like ours, but we’ve got some clever ways to do it. So it will be her dealing with what’s going on, figuring out what’s going on, and then yeah, finding ways through it and finding ways to grow.
What’s coming up for Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins)?
Atwater’s got some fun stuff coming up. We will see his dad return this season, which I’m excited about. He gets some more storylines with his father. But more than that, he’s got just a really impactful episode coming up in Episode 5 where he is put in this situation that really is perfectly designed to shake him a bit and to shake his core a bit. So we’ll see how he reacts to that and how that triggers some things for him.
Lori Allen/NBC
What about Platt (Amy Morton) beyond trying to get Voight to find a replacement for Ruzek right now?
Yeah, Platt’s got some fun stuff this year. She’s definitely sort of the heart of keeping everybody together, right? She’s always the sounding board, and I think, especially for Voight, that she’s the confidant. She’s the confidant to him. She’s one of his peers. He hasn’t had that since Olinsky [Elias Koteas] really. So she’s kind of the last standing old-school peer of his that he can talk to. And yeah, she’ll play a part in his storyline this year.
Any other returning characters?
We have ASA Chapman [Sara Bues] returning. I love her and Voight together. I think they have this really interesting bond, so we’re going to explore that more and explore them becoming very trusting in each other in a new, unique way. And of course [Burgess and Ruzek’s daughter] Makayla [Ramona Edith Williams]. McKayla will make some appearances as well.
Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC
