It’s that time of year again: The One Chicago shows are joining forces this week for a major crossover.
The special event finds not only the first-responders of the Windy City coming together to protect their home, but also two former cast members rejoining the ranks. Read on as we review everything we know about the latest crossover, including how ‘Upstead’ will react to seeing each other again and which characters are in danger.
What is the One Chicago crossover about?
This year’s crisis starts off in the skies: “Firehouse 51 is called to an airfield when a passenger jet suddenly goes silent mid-air, triggering a high-stakes emergency,” reads the official description. “Their discovery cracks open a bigger and deadlier mystery — one with consequences that could ripple far beyond the runway and put countless lives in jeopardy.”
How is this crossover different?
According to Med showrunner Allen MacDonald, this season’s crossover is “more character-oriented, I think, than some of the ones in the past,” he tells Soaps.com. “We definitely still have the suspense and the action, but one of the marching orders from the beginning that we all agreed on is that we wanted to come from a place of character.”
P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan adds that the three-hour event is also “definitely the most integrated. There’s moments of this thing where you’re not going to know which episode you’re in, which is great. So I think it’s the most sort of immersive and connected that they’ve ever been.”
Who’s coming back for the crossover?
As previously announced, former Intelligence unit team members Jay Halstead (played Jesse Lee Soffer) and his ex-wife Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) will return after their respective departures in Season 10 (for Soffer) and the Season 11 finale (for Spiridakos). Upton and Halstead’s marriage broke up after he left Chicago to join the Army in Bolivia, where he was going to be tracking drug cartel targets. As for Upton, it wasn’t clear which career path she was going to follow upon her departure from Intelligence. Now, Upton “returns to her former stomping grounds, but this time on the federal level as a Special Agent of the FBI. She joins her former P.D. allies after a drug enforcement task force case out of her Detroit field office leads her back to Chicago,” per the official description. Meanwhile, Halstead has “been deep undercover” on an assignment “that leads him on a path to the same case that Upton is investigating.”
How does the ‘Upstead’ reunion play out?
When Upton and Halstead come face-to-face for the first time in the crossover, “they’re definitely surprised to see one another,” Sigan previews. “That’s one thing that they’re dealing with. But more than that, they haven’t seen each other in years. They probably haven’t spoken in years. The last time was definitely through letters and voicemails and texts. So this is the first time we’re really getting to see them back together. There’s just so much unsaid. There’s a lot of sort of uncomfortable tension, and then over the course, obviously, of the three hours, that shifts and evolves and changes, and you get a lot of different dynamics between the pair of them.”
Who’s in danger during the crossover?
It wouldn’t be a One Chicago crossover if we weren’t worried about the safety of the Windy City’s finest. Fire boss Andrea Newman warns that “everybody” is impacted in some way, and several lives are in peril. “It’s not a closed-ended incident where then you’re dealing with just after-effects. This has effects that go all the way through. The incident itself kicks off and doesn’t stop. It’s like a locomotive all the way to the very end,” Newman previews. “So everybody’s impacted and at risk because of that. Every single one of our shows has multiple characters whose lives are on the line in this one, and that’s unique, too.”
When does the crossover air?
The event airs this Wednesday, March 4, with Fire kicking off the night at the special time of 8/7c, followed by Med at 9 p.m. and P.D. at 10 p.m on NBC.
