Chicago PD Season 13 Episode 13 Caps the One Chicago Crossover with Voight Reckoning with His Past & Upstead Sidestepping Theirs

Critic’s Rating: 4.2 / 5.0

4.2

And we’re in the final stretch for the One Chicago crossover.

It’s been an action-packed event, and it ironically winds down a bit in this last leg.

The final hour of “Reckoning” truly brings home why that was the perfect title and ties it well into the ongoing theme of the season for Voight.

I’m bringing up the rear here. For part one, check out Alexandria Ingham’s Chicago Fire Review, and Jack Ori has you covered as always with the Chicago Med Review for this event.

For a crossover, I have to say they did a better job of incorporating most of the Chicago Fire‘s characters throughout this event than many of the others.

On the Chicago PD front, it was fascinating to watch it fall into the same old habit of centering the same characters, whether they were from the past or the present.

For roughly three seasons, one of the biggest criticisms about Chicago PD was how it would feel like Voight, Hailey, and Halstead dominated many storylines while the other characters would get sidelined.

And throughout Chicago PD Season 13, in Upstead’s absence, we’ve had a lot of Voight and Imani serving as his partner. While she didn’t have as prominent a role, she definitely was more present during her first crossover than Burgess, Atwater, and Torres.

It also seems that Ruzek wasn’t making his return for the crossover after all.

Interestingly, by this point in the hour, with two major characters returning, it was frustrating that a crossover event would undercut the significance of their return.

It’s the little things that you cling to when it comes to the return of major players, especially for the likes of Halstead, who left under such tumultuous and polarizing circumstances that, at best, folks desperately craved a proper redemption. At worst, people didn’t want him to return at all.

Because they’re buried in this big event, there’s no room to address things, namely, Upstead properly. And he genuinely thought they’d have conversations in the middle of this massive investigation, and Hailey wasn’t having any of that.

Good for her. Because why would you think NOW is the time to discuss how you abandoned her, sir?

Hailey carries much of the crossover, since it’s her investigation that ultimately dovetails into this whole ordeal with Thomas. And how we got there was messy and complicated, but no less entertaining.

I can even attest as someone who isn’t the biggest Hailey fan that working with the FBI or being part of this joint task force suits her, and she was laser-focused on her business while also not as willing to go completely rogue just for kicks.

She had the right balance, and that carried throughout as they closed in on Thomas and what was really motivating this nerve agent attack situation.

The hour dropped us right into those flashbacks of the Heart of Chicago Fire, and I can understand how something like that would traumatize someone. Young Thomas not only got severely burned but also knew his family was dying in that house.

And Voight saved him. The CGI approach they took with Voight and Sharon made me giggle a bit, but for Thomas, it almost seemed like being alive and grappling with pain, and the truth was a fate worse than death.

I appreciated how the hour explored how traumatizing events and systemic failures can turn victims into monsters. And it’s especially something that Voight has been attuned to as of late.

Interestingly, we were still witnessing how those same failures could come into play. Conway and his barking orders about following a dozen protocols and red tape could have ultimately resulted in the deaths of more than just those 188 people.

It was beyond grating that they were supposed to stand there and wait for a laundry list of protocols before they could enter Thomas’ torched apartment and potentially find out what he was planning or the nerve agent that they could use as an antidote.

Meanwhile, they already lost Macey, and Capp and Cruz were fighting for their lives along with Lizzie, preparing for the absolute worst. Seriously, it’s no wonder Pascal defied orders — damn near half his firehouse was in peril.

I’m going up there. If you want to stop me, you better send every man you got! – Pascal

And he was smooth with slipping Mouch the hard drive so that he could give it to the cops before the Feds arrested him.

Conway just felt like a thorn in the side of everyone, including viewers, for the entire crossover, and I hated every second of it. It almost felt like they wanted to soften us up to how the Chicago PD folks go rogue — “See? When you follow orders, this is what yo have to deal with… red tape.”

But we finally got to the core of what was driving Thomas, and kudos to the writers, as it worked perfectly with PD’s exploration of Voight’s past, his reconciliation with his sins, and his really coming to grips with who and what he is as a person and cop.

Thomas was angry about the joint negligence of CPD and CFD regarding the Heart of Chicago fire. Voight was sitting in this location, knowing there was a meth lab in the apartment building, because he wanted to catch one of the biggest meth dealers in the city, whose drugs were killing everyone.

He worked with Pascal and the late Cranston to postpone the fire inspection for a couple of days, but an unfortunate twist resulted in one of the city’s worst fires that killed 22 people and left Thomas an angry, hurt, grieving man.

Atwater’s hesitance to even mention what he was reading got to me because he hates to be the bearer of bad news. But it was Halstead immediately assuming the worst and then trying to rope Hailey into it that was annoying.

Neither of them has been around for over a year. Halstead falling into his same shtick of blaming Voight for things or getting pissy about secrecy was grating, but at least they didn’t dwell on that too long, and Hailey shut him down quickly.

Besides, anything he could have assumed about Voight was dispelled when he told the team outright to use whatever information they found if it gave them a lead to an antidote. He didn’t care about the possibility of going down for it.

It meant Imani and Hailey gave that newspaper reporter confirmation of what happened, even though at least one of the women seemed resistant to potentially incriminating Voight.

An inability to slow down momentum meant that we didn’t really get to see these two officially meet or even size each other up. Hell, I would have settled for a snarky Imani quip. Brady Bunch the Sequel or something.

And it certainly would’ve been nice to have a moment given that Imani is ultimately Hailey’s replacement, not just as a similar character and detective on the unit, but as Voight’s second-in-command.

The Telegraph reporter at least leads them to the Chemist, and only then does it become clearer how they’d find Thomas. He used the drug the Chemist gave him to kill Cranston, with it looking like a heart attack.

And he intended to use the nerve agent to kill those in that room at Cranston’s memorial. Now, it was bizarre that he was angling to kill first responders, and most of them should’ve been dealing with the whole plane, nerve agent attack thing, but nevermind all of that.

The scene between Voight and Thomas was beautifully shot. I loved that Voight was talking to the little boy in him, the victim of all of this, not the man who was actively a perpetrator.

You could see the weight and freedom lift from Thomas when Voight validated him. Yes, everything he said was true. No excuses or misdirects, just confirmation.

The tragedy is that Thomas couldn’t just take that. Halstead succeeded in getting the nerve agent from him, but then he was about to kill Hailey.

It was the second time in the crossover that someone almost shot her, goodness. Voight had to kill the kid, but you could see how affected he was when he couldn’t save him.

And I loved that he put Thomas’ file in the Heart of Chicago Fire victims’ box alongside his family.

It aligned well with this quiet reckoning that Voight has experienced all season.

Even when Halstead spoke to him, admitting that the fire wasn’t actually on him since he made the call of mitigating the most deaths, the meth lab didn’t start the fire, and so forth, Voight still copped to it.

He still feels it’s his sin to take on, and he’s willing to face the accountability for it.

And this shocks Halstead. He couldn’t help but notice that Voight is different — a different man than the one he left behind during Chicago PD Season 10.

“You’re different. – Halstead of Voight

I can’t decide whether part of it is Halstead actually seeing Voight’s real evolution, or if it’s also that Halstead isn’t so self-righteous anymore, so he can see part of who Voight has always been.

Of course, he’s also made his own mistakes.

Halstead felt muted as a character, like Soffer couldn’t remember how to settle into the role, which is understandable if so, as it’s been a while, and he spent last season leading FBI: International.

But also, there just wasn’t enough time to address his reappearance, which felt more shoehorned in than Hailey’s appearance. And half the time, the frustration was in him trying to carry on as if Chicago, Intelligence, everything hadn’t changed since he left.

There’s no picking back up and waltzing back in as if nothing happened.

They settled on Hailey taking the case because she saw he was involved, and he stayed in Chicago because she was there. Okay.

And by the end of the hour, he gives this vague apology that feels like a whole lot of nothing and still doesn’t really answer anything.

I can assume that at some point, so much time had passed that he didn’t know how to reach out, or apologize, or tell her that he still cares, or whatever else.

It felt like an obligatory acknowledgment without depth or meaning. Hailey was all about moving forward. And, I guess they just left the door open for them with the pair going to get drinks.

It’s all anticlimactic and unsatisfying. To me, it felt like they were trying to sail past everything neatly. There was no real passion or emotion to this reunion, and they completely glossed over reuniting with the team.

Other Bits:

• I’m glad Hannah’s baby is okay. Goodness knows, One Chicago is allergic to healthy pregnancies. I do wish she’d stop being so stubborn and defiant, though.
• Frost made the right call by bringing Lizzie’s family in. I hope they actually do more with this. Lizzie is such a frustratingly one-dimensional character. I’d rather spend time on her family life than her weird romantic trysts.
• Do we think there will be any fallout for Voight from the Telegraph writing about this fire, or will it just fall into a continuity void?
• I actually wish the plot point of Halstead’s mysterious return could’ve been a two-part Chicago PD event, where we spent more time wondering whether he was undercover, and he got wrapped up in a bigger investigation. That actually would’ve been a cool way to bring them back.
• Did anyone else feel like Lenox was out of place working with Intelligence for ten seconds?
• So, like, does ANYONE know that Atwater is going to be a dad?

Over to you, Chicago PD and One Chicago Fanatics!

Comments are like cookies, and I have a sweet tooth. Where do you rank this crossover out of all of One Chicago’s crossovers? How do you feel about how they handled Upstead?

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