Why ‘Chicago P.D.’ Killed off Reid — How It Set up Voight’s Season 13 Storyline

Meredith Jacobs May 30, 2025, 10:31 am

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Shawn Hatosy as Deputy Chief Reid, Jason Beghe as Hank Voight — 'Chicago P.D.' Season 12 Finale 'Vows' — Lori Allen / NBC

When One Chicago fans first met Hank Voight (Jason Beghe), it was as the antagonist on Chicago Fire. Then came along Chicago P.D., and we’ve watched him grow — not completely — from the man he used to be who did some shady, dark things. But he returned to that darkness in a major way in the Season 12 finale.

This season of Chicago P.D. saw Intelligence dealing with a corrupt deputy chief, Reid (Shawn Hatosy), who, in the penultimate episode, arranged for the murder of a drug dealer whom Voight was working on flipping and then disbanded the unit and put them under investigation. In the finale, Voight revealed where Reid would be to the drug dealer’s son, who then shot and killed the deputy chief.

“We sort of always knew that when Shawn signed on that it’d be a one-year thing, and what we really envisioned that character as was this funhouse mirror to Voight because that’s really what we wanted him to be. And the idea was he was going to be testing Voight at every single turn and sort of testing, has Voight changed? Has he evolved? Who is he now?” showrunner Gwen Sigan explained to TV Insider.

“And to kind of really test that, we needed to take it sort of as dark as we could make it and make the stakes as high as we could, which you see in the penultimate [episode]. This is the first time that we’re basically kicked out of our offices and are told that it’s all going to be taken apart and basically stripped for pieces. So it brought Voight to that place, and it felt like we wanted to get him to his darkest place and see if he would take the bait and obviously his character did,” she continued. (The only person who could’ve stopped him? The late Olinsky.)

Voight put his plan into action knowing that it would “cost” him Chapman (Sara Bues). When the ADA tries to talk to him in the finale, he tells her, “I don’t get more.” Then, as Reid was dying, he told the sergeant, “You’re worse than me.”

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For Sigan, “Reid’s statement is something the audience can question. It’s something that there’s a lot of different ways to look at it. Is it true? Is it not true? And I think it’s going to be rattling around in Voight’s subconscious for a while.”

Now, there’s a question of how that’s going to affect him going forward, and that’s something that will be explored in Season 13. “Who knows what this guy’s going to get up to next year. I mean, he’s definitely in an interesting place and to see how the team is going to react to that because the team has different relationships with him now than years ago. So how is that going to all work out next season?” asks Sigan.

What are you hoping to see next season for Voight? Let us know in the comments section below.

Chicago P.D., Season 13, Fall 2025, Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC