Jason Beghe Previews Revisiting Case Voight Failed to Solve After Wife’s Death

Sergeant Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) revisits a part of his past that was painful in the October 16 episode of Chicago P.D.: a case that he took shortly after his wife’s death.

In “The After,” ASA Chapman (Sara Bues) assists Intelligence with a sensitive investigation that drudges up painful memories for Voight. Beghe hesitates to say that the case is “haunting” Voight but stresses how tough it is for him. “It’s definitely smacking him in the face a little,” he tells TV Insider.

The case involves a “terrible” rapist with a specific modus operandi, Beghe previews. “The episode starts where his wife who had died, Camille, is brought into his mind because of a leak in the basement, and so he has to clean up the leak and sees that possessions that he was holding in storage were getting destroyed. Then very soon he hears over the radio about this woman in a very specific state of distress that’s very similar to a case—too similar to a case that he worked 15 years ago, that he never solved, never had a suspect.”

That case was Voight’s first back after Camille’s death. “He knew that he took the case before he should have been back to work, but he needed the work because he couldn’t feel the feelings. It was too much,” explains Beghe. “[He thinks] that he failed to get the bad guy and solve the case and effect justice because he was mentally, emotionally inhibited by the grief. All of that is now coming back.”

He continues, “It’s a chance for him to feel a little bit of what the loss was. The other half of his heart, maybe most of his heart was snatched from him. That’s a kind of an alone that he just wasn’t able to fully confront. And so he came up with his set of solutions, including going back to work. Now, 15 years later, there’s a chance for him to kind of dip his toe back in the water.”

The season began with Voight moving from case to case after Upton’s (Tracy Spiridaks) departure and his near-death experience. Now, “he’s calming down a little,” says Beghe. “But that experience changed him, and why try to define what that is? We don’t want to limit it. Let’s see. But is it a coincidence that he has this level of vulnerability and exposure, or is there a connection, a relationship between the two, and what’s next and where will he go?

Do you think Voight’s doing better now than at the beginning of the season? What are you hoping to see ahead for him? Let us know in the comments section below.

Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC