‘Chicago P.D.’ alums Tracy Spiridakos and Jesse Lee Soffer returned for the special episodes and open up to PEOPLE about their characters’ final moments
NEED TO KNOW
- The One Chicago Crossover, featuring Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D., brought back former P.D. stars Tracy Spiridakos and Jay Halstead as Hailey Upton and Jay Halstead
- The three-hour episode ended with them having an important conversation
- The actors, and the three showrunners, talk to PEOPLE about key moments in the crossover
Upstead has reunited. Kind of. Maybe.
After more than three years apart, Chicago P.D. characters Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos, who left the show in May 2024) and Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer, who left in October 2022) finally came face-to-face during NBC’s One Chicago crossover event — blending the casts of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med and Chicago P.D. — on Wednesday, March 4.
And while they weren’t exactly on the best of terms — Halstead went to Bolivia and ultimately ghosted his wife, eventually sending her divorce papers — they managed to put their issues aside and focus on the horrifying case at hand. A terrifying mass-casualty event that’s left 188 plane passengers dead and many more people in danger, including several beloved firefighters and doctors, will do that.
But once an antidote to the poisonous compound was created and the person who caused all the damage was neutralized (read: Voight shot him), Hailey, who is now working for the FBI out of Detroit, and Jay, who is still doing something in South America with the Army (it’s unclear even to Soffer!), were able to have a little chat.
“Hailey, I stayed to work this case because you were here,” Jay admitted.
“I came here because you were here,” she responded, adding, “Good luck, Jay. I wish you the best. I always do.”
After Hailey continued to put on her jacket and get ready to walk away, Jay blurted out, “Hailey, I’m sorry.” When she asked what for, he responded, “All of it. I lost myself here on this team, this city, and I’m sorry I couldn’t find my way back. Sorry for all the wrong I did. All of it. I’m sorry that I lost you.”
“I’m sorry too,” she said. “What time’s your flight?”
“I don’t care,” he answered. She laughed and, after a moment, asked, “Want to get a drink?” And away they went.
As for where that led, Spiridakos, 38, tells PEOPLE, “I think they had a couple drinks, and I think it opened the door. But Hailey is pretty closed-off, and everything that happened was so hurtful for her that I think it was a drink. It was a conversation, and I think it opened the door to further conversations. But I don’t think it was a, “Okay. All is forgiven.” For her, it would take a very long time to find that trust again and even be able to move forward. But I think it’s a door that opened other doors.”
Reacting to Spiridakos’ theory, Soffer, 41, says, “It sounds like you’re saying that it’s a little open-ended, and maybe there’s still more story to be mined.”
He adds, “There’s all sorts of different interpretations. [Producer] Brian Luce, on set, was like, ‘They went home together. Don’t you even kid yourself. They went home together.'”
“And I was like, ‘No, Hailey’s angry!'” Spiridakos says.
The final scenes of the crossover showed each of the shows’ chiefs “Reckoning” (the episode’s title) with everything that went down. Sharon Goodwin (S. Epatha Merkerson) looked around as the E.D. was converted back to normal after needing to go into containment and quarantine mode.
Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) added Tommy Maher, the cause of the episode’s atrocities, to the 25-year-old Heart of Chicago Fire files as the 23rd victim, a sign the head of Intelligence was taking emotional responsibility for what happened, even if he wasn’t technically responsible for either the fire years ago or the events of the day.
And Chief Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney) was seen leaving jail — he was arrested after breaching Tommy’s apartment post-explosion to look for clues after being told by the FBI to stand down — and receiving a text from his boss, Annette Davis (Annabeth Gish), that said, “Call me when you’re out.”
That can’t be good. The fire department has been looking at making cuts, and Annette has had an eye on Firehouse 51 all season. Plus, it was confirmed in January that Mulroney would be going on hiatus from the show towards the end of the season. It remains unclear if the actor will return for season 15.
PEOPLE also checked in with the showrunners for Fire, Med and P.D. about a few more hot topics from the crossover.
Med’s John Frost (Darren Barnet) tried to help Fire’s Lizzy Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) following their break-up by calling her estranged siblings to come and see her while she was recovering from exposure to the life-threatening chemical compound. The gesture had mixed results.
“I was very excited for Frost and Novak’s story to be played out in the crossover,” Med showrunner Allen MacDonald tells PEOPLE. “Frost wanted to be open, have a romantic relationship, share things, and Novak did, and then he overstepped with it.”
“The big gesture was problematic in some ways,” says Fire showrunner Andrea Newman. “I think, going forward, there’s a lot going on in both of their lives with other characters. … Both of them have come out of it with a renewed focus on other people. It’s a little bit of a clash, so we’ll have to see if they start working their way back towards each other or not.”
Med’s Dean Archer (Steven Weber) and Hannah Asher (Jessy Schram), who are not in a relationship but are expecting a child together, clashed when Hannah insisted on going into an ambulance to help with a pregnant patient who was dying from exposure to the toxic chemical compound.
MacDonald confirms there will be fallout from that argument, noting, “Very early on, Hannah very specifically said, ‘We’ll just be two friends having a baby.’ And so they’ve kind of been trying to maintain their friendship, stay in their corners and pretend that they aren’t having feelings for each other. And I think that at different times they do have feelings for each other, but the question will be if it happens at the same time.”
Fallout will also be coming to the firehouse as Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney), Joe Cruz (Joe Miñoso) and Capp (Randy Flagler) recover and grapple with the horrors they witnessed aboard the plane filled with 187 deceased passengers.
“This is what we love about doing a show about first responders,” Fire boss Andrea Newman tells PEOPLE. “This was a mass-casualty event, and those have a certain way of affecting people. But all of our first responders have to see tragedy and death all the time. And then how do they incorporate that and move forward? Some people share, some people keep it inside. All of the ways that this plays out for all the different characters, we’ll definitely see it. It affects all of them going forward.”
She continues: “In fact, we are doing an episode with one of the featured actors who isn’t a regular cast member who was particularly affected coming back, and that kind of renews all of the feelings that they have about the crossover. So, yeah, these things have lingering effects that we will definitely see, I’m sure on all the shows going forward.”
Chicago Med airs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on NBC, followed by Chicago Fire at 9 and Chicago P.D. at 10.
