“FBI” Is saying goodbye, once again, to Maggie. The character, played by Missy Peregrym, made her last Season 4 appearance on Tuesday, as she is taking time off from the show for maternity leave. The actor announced her pregnancy via social media in February.
During the episode, Maggie and OA (Zeeko Zaki) attempted to track down a man who is using deadly sarin gas — a poison with horrific results that OA has witnessed in his past. After hunting down the man responsible and killing him, Maggie gets trapped in a room where the gas has been released, causing her to pass out as OA tries without success to break in. Eventually, he’s able to smash into the room just in time.
The episode ends with both OA and Maggie in the hospital. While she’s on the path to a full recovery eventually, she’s still not awake, and OA is distraught by the idea that she could have died. In the episode’s final moments, he sits at her bedside and lets her know that he needs her and doesn’t want to do this job without her — and receives a brief nod, assuring him that she’s still there.
In real life, Peregrym approached showrunner Rick Eid with the news that she is expecting her second child. She previously took time off of the CBS show during Season 2 when she welcomed her first baby; at the time, Maggie was away on an undercover mission.
“Basically, I told her, ‘Tell us what you want what you need, and we’ll do our best to accommodate it.’ She was feeling great and wanting to work for as long as she could,” Eid tells Variety. “We had a general idea when she was going to leave, and so there was just a question of finding the right episode to pair with that and the right plot to pair with that. I think the sarin gas idea seemed to be a exciting, thrilling way to send her off.”
He adds, “We just wanted to find a way to credibly send her off within the imaginary worlds we’re living in, and make it so that she can come back when she’s physically ready to come back.”
Eid, who is the executive producer and showrunner on Season 21 of “Law & Order,” as well as an executive producer on “Chicago P.D.,” knows a thing or two about characters leaving the show — temporarily or for good.
“It gives you an opportunity to think of a new character possibly or a new dynamic or new partnerships, and to explore, whether permanently or temporarily, a different dynamic or different elements. It can be exciting,” he says. “There will be a new character coming in. We’re gonna leave it as a surprise for now. But there’s a new character coming in that we’re excited about.”
During the April 26 episode, fans will see the “aftermath” of what happened to Maggie and how the team — OA in particular — is affected. “It’s a powerful episode about OA and his past as someone who was in the military and saw a lot of things,” says Eid. “In some ways, it’s exploring the idea of PTSD or the emotional stress he’s under both from the past and more recently.”
Also, viewers should prepare for a “really emotional, really powerful” finale soon as well, that involves Dubal (Jeremy Sisto) and his son.
