Chicago P.D. ended Season 8 with a doozy of a finale that all but turned the Intelligence Unit upside down, and it left a lot of unanswered questions that P.D. will need to address when it returns in Season 9. Now, almost exactly halfway through the hiatus before all three shows of One Chicago are back on NBC, one P.D. star has revealed the beginning of filming for Season 9, and there are several questions that I think need to be answered sooner rather than later in the new season.
Jesse Lee Soffer, who has been playing Jay Halstead going all the way back to Chicago P.D.‘s origins on Chicago Fire, took to Twitter a little after midnight on July 21 to reveal that filming for Season 9 was going to start in the morning (and he was still awake). In honor of the occasion, here are my picks for six questions that need to be answered now that the finale has sunk in for a couple of months!
Will Samantha Miller Be Back?
Nicole Ari Parker joined the Chicago P.D. cast as Deputy Superintendent Samantha Miller to lead the charge in police reform at the start of Season 8, but she sustained a personal loss in the penultimate episode of the season when her son was murdered. She arguably could have bent the rules to possibly save his life, but that was only obvious to her in hindsight.
Still, was the tragedy enough for her to leave her job? It’s worth noting that Nicole Ari Parker was cast in two new TV projects over the summer, including HBO Max’s Sex and the City revival, so I’m not counting on getting more of Miller after losing her son, but I’d like to see her again.
Can Voight Be Redeemed?
Voight has been crossing lines ever since Jason Beghe debuted on Chicago Fire back in 2012, but working with Miller had him at least walking closer to the straight and narrow… until the finale, when Voight went far off-book to get his hands on a man he believed could give up information on the kidnapped Burgess, and manipulated the hell out of an upset Upton when she arrived on the scene to try and help.
Whether or not Voight deliberately let the bad guy lift his gun so Upton would have to shoot to kill is up for debate, but he totally could have reported it to CPD as a good shoot since she pulled the trigger to save her sergeant. Upton was devastated and an emotional wreck after being pulled down into the mud with him, and P.D. has a lot of work to do on Voight if he’s going to be redeemed for that, in my book.
What’s Up Next For Upstead?
Of course, Upton is a grown woman who makes her own decisions, but can anybody really blame her for slowly but seemingly surely having an emotional breakdown after the authority figure in her life played on all her insecurities and trauma in the worst way? In a twist that would have been romantic under just about any other circumstances, a still very upset Upton proposed to Halstead. To his credit, he seemed to be able to tell that something was wrong, but the finale didn’t reveal his answer. So what’s up with Upstead in Season 9?
