How Much Trouble Is Halstead in on ‘Chicago P.D.’?

Meredith Jacobs November 21, 2019

Chicago P.D. - Season 7 — Matt Dinerstein/NBC

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 7, Episode 9 of Chicago P.D., “Absolution.”]

The fall finale of the Chicago P.D. finale is exactly why cops shouldn’t let a case become personal.

In Episode 6, Jay (Jesse Lee Soffer) blamed himself for pushing too hard and accepting what turned out to be a “false positive” match for the killer of two young boys. He put the suspect, Marcus West, in lock-up, where he was attacked, and he eventually died of his injuries. And as we learn three episodes later, Jay has been spending time with Marcus’ wife, Angela (Vicky Jeudy), and his son, undercover as “Jim.”

“I think Jay still blames himself” for Marcus’ death, Hailey (Tracy Spiridakos) explains to Voight (Jason Beghe). He’s been helping them, and when he went to do the same one night, he’s attacked, kidnapped, and accused of stealing some guys’ drugs.

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Throughout their captivity, an injured Angela blames herself for Marcus’ death. If she’d been able to get him off drugs, he never would have killed the boys and then been killed himself, she insists. After she suggests that her son would be better off without her, Jay finally tells her the truth: he’s a cop, and Marcus didn’t kill the boys.

“All the evidence said Marcus killed two little kids, so I just treated him like somebody who killed two innocent boys,” he admits. She doesn’t want his apology or money and threatens to tell their kidnappers he’s a cop. He convinces her not to — she’d be killed, too, and she needs to think of her son — and they work together to get him free.

(Matt Dinerstein/NBC)

Everything goes according to plan, at least at first. Jay takes out the two men holding them hostage, just before the team arrives on scene. But when he goes back to Angela, she’s waiting with a gun and shoots him.

And with that, we’ll have to wait until the January 8 episode to find out Jay’s fate. As the promo below shows, he’s brought to Med, where Will (Nick Gehlfuss) looks concerned as he talks to Voight. Could P.D. be the next One Chicago show to say goodbye to one of its own?

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Or should Intelligence — and the CPD as a whole — be more concerned about what Angela might reveal to the public? Crawford (Paul Adelstein) pushed for the unit to use the fancy new facial-recognition software despite knowing its flaws, and to keep that from the public, placed the blame for the boys’ deaths on the innocent Marcus West.

“People are going to know what that cop did to my husband,” Angela warns Voight from her hospital bed. “This whole city’s going to know.”

Crawford had been more than happy to put Jay’s head on a pike at the time, and it’s very possible he’ll be willing to offer him up as a sacrificial lamb once again. (That is, of course, assuming Jay lives.) Whatever happens next, things are about to get very messy.

Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC