Fans finally learned what Detective Hailey Upton has been up to since she left the series in Season 11.
Chicago P.D. icon Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) made her triumphant return during the three-part crossover event with Chicago Fire and Chicago Med, and viewers were delighted to see she’s been doing great since leaving the Windy City.
After being ghosted by her ex-husband, Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer), who went undercover while investigating drug cartels in Bolivia until eventually disappearing off the face of the planet, Upton was a bit worse for wear before ultimately deciding she deserved to properly move on. The last time viewers saw Upton in the Season 11 finale, she turned in her badge to her Intelligence Unit commander and longtime mentor Hank Voight (Jason Beghe). As one of Upton’s biggest champions, he played a monumental role in helping Upton gain the courage to start a fresh chapter somewhere new.
We watched as Upton researched jobs at the FBI, FEMA, and DEA before packing up her belongings and hailing a cab to the airport. Once inside the taxi, the driver asked where she was heading, but the episode faded to black before a smiling Upton could answer.
While Upton’s future was left intentionally open-ended, Chihards finally got answers during P.D.’s epic crossover event with Chicago Fire and Chicago Med when Upton made her triumphant return to the Windy City. And she wasn’t the only one heading back to the Midwest for a little One Chicago reunion, as her ex-husband Jay Halstead became entangled in a drug smuggling case.
Hailey Upton is now a Special Agent for the FBI drug task force
In the first episode of the crossover, Upton revealed she’d moved to Detroit to work as a Special Agent for the FBI. In an interview with NBC Insider, Spiridakos chatted about the thrill of learning where Upton landed after all this time.
“I think Hailey is kind of where I imagined she would be. When I left, those were [jobs] I was researching; she was looking to see where she was going to end up,” Spiradakos shared. “She knew she needed to leave Chicago, but she wasn’t quite sure where she was going to land. And so seeing that she landed in the FBI and was working in Detroit, I was like, ‘I could totally see that. That makes sense.'”
At the top of Fire’s “Reckoning,” federal agents got an alert about a commercial aircraft flying over Lake Michigan that went radio silent without any emergency distress signals or explanation. With a known drug smuggler on board the flight, the FBI drug enforcement task force soon arrived at the air traffic controller tower to investigate. Enter the beloved Special Agent Upton.
Jay Halstead helped FBI Agent Hailey Upton close a high-stakes case
After his arrival on the crossover and as they worked the case together, Halstead was eager to check in on Hailey. The divorced couple hasn’t seen each other in years, but she bristled at this gesture as he let the perp get away. Halstead returned to Chicago as an undercover agent who had been working with Upton’s drug smuggler, bringing the pair together again.
Upton’s steadfast investigation eventually led to the discovery of the perp: Thomas Marr, a man whose family was killed in a fire from 25 years ago, who still held a grudge against the CFD and CPD due to their actions that led to the inferno. Marr had already secretly murdered a high-profile Chief in the Chicago Fire Department and was now targeting the memorial service due to its many CFD and CPD attendees.
The Intelligence Unit sprang into action, emboldened by their need to find the second capsule in order to develop an antidote for the many first responders who’d been exposed to the nerve agent. Sure enough, the Intelligence Unit was able to take Marr down and retrieve the capsule just in time for Chicago Med doctors to develop an antidote. Talk about a close call — and without Upton, it’s hard to say justice would have ever been served.
Watch One Chicago Wednesdays on NBC and stream episodes the next day on Peacock.