Chicago P.D.’s Sergeant Hank Voight successfully took down Deputy Chief Charlie Reid during the season 12 finale — but that doesn’t mean it’ll be business as usual when the new season kicks off.
Jason Beghe, who plays Voight, exclusively told Us Weekly on Thursday, September 25, that his character doesn’t have any “regrets” about his past actions, but teased there are “certainly repercussions” for what transpired.
During the May finale, Reid (Shawn Hatosy) died at the hands of a drug dealer’s son, who Voight made sure knew Reid was to blame for his father’s death. When Reid was dying, he claimed Voight was “worse” than him.
Voight, meanwhile, was set on getting his Intelligence Unit put back together after Reid pulled them apart and didn’t appear to care what it cost. Beghe, however, told Us that Voight’s extreme tactics will come back to haunt him and the team to start season 13.
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“Voight isn’t a guy who lives in the past. He’s very much in the present. So, he might have made a mistake, but it is what it is,” the actor said of his character’s mindset. “Now, what do you do? He understands that life happens. Sometimes it’s good, sometimes it’s bad.”
Beghe, 65, teased, “What determines life is how you respond to it,” playing coy about what Voight’s response will be.
Showrunner Gwen Sigan previously told Us that Voight’s alleged misconduct leading up to Reid’s death wouldn’t magically disappear now that someone else was in charge of the Chicago P.D.
“It wasn’t just easy clean, we’re done, bow tied and they figured it all out,” she said in May, noting that come season 13 there would be a “different dynamic” within the unit.
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Sigan teased that Detective Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) and Adam Ruzek (Patrick Flueger), who are now married, made it clear they didn’t exactly believe Voight’s account of how Reid died and why it meant they were all going to get their jobs back.
“There was so much unease in that scene. There was a lot of doubt in a lot of their minds,” Sigan shared. “[But] do they wanna look into it? There’s not gonna be evidence [to contradict Voight’s story].”
She added, “You could see that Burgess was feeling something isn’t quite right here. So it’s definitely an open-ended kind of thread that we can pull if we want to next season.”
In addition to Voight trying to get his team reinstated this season, there will also be a new cop thrown into the mix with Arienne Mandi’s Naomi Kerr. (Toya Turner’s Kiana Cook will not be back for season 13, leaving an opening for Kerr.)
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“She comes in hot on this episode. She’s got a lot to do. We get to meet her in a really fun way,” Sigan said on Thursday about the new officer. “Especially with Voight, she poses a bit of an obstacle at first.”
Beghe added that Kerr brings a surprising “comfort” to Voight that the audience might find “interesting.”
Chicago P.D. returns on NBC Wednesday, October 1, at 10 p.m. ET.
