‘Chicago P.D.’ Season 12 Premiere Death Explained By EP Gwen Sigan

[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the Chicago P.D. Season 12 premiere “Ten Ninety-Nine.”]

Voight (Jason Beghe), after his near-death experience and Upton’s exit, has been keeping busy, and therefore so has Intelligence—and they all suffer a shocking loss in the final moments of the Chicago P.D. Season 12 premiere.

When the episode begins, there’s a new detective, Martel (Victoria Cartagena), working with the unit, but in its final moments, she and Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) stop when shots are fired as they’re driving. Shortly after getting out of the car, she’s killed.

Below, showrunner Gwen Sigan explains why Martel was killed off and teases what’s ahead. (Plus, get scoop on when Marina Squerciati‘s Burgess is back and the Burzek wedding here.)

Talk about introducing a new detective only to kill her at the end of the premiere.

Gwen Sigan: We knew in the room that the story we wanted to tell was really dealing with Voight and how he’s been affected by the events of last year and most especially, I think, two pieces, which is that Upton’s gone, and then also that he had this near death experience and that he remembers a lot of it and he remembers what it felt like, and he remembers that this was all just going to be gone, right? He was just going to be gone, and that would’ve been the end of it. And I think for him, it sort of triggered this almost introspective thing—he doesn’t know that, we just see him dealing with it in a Voight way of, “I gotta move, I gotta move, I gotta move.”

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But he’s dealing with this idea that you don’t get a lot of time and you’re not going to know when it’s over, and what do you do with that time and how do you make it worth something? And so when we knew that’s what the episode was about, we also wanted to tell that story through another character, which ended up being Martel. And it felt fresh. It felt different for us to introduce a unit member that way where we get to just see her a month in and she’s already been accepted and she’s already found her footing. She has this past that deals with those same issues where we learn that she’s coming from a mental leave and that she took some time off because her partner died.

And so it, for us, felt like it was all the perfect pieces and then to end in a way where you’re emphasizing that this is how death happens, that it can happen instantaneously, it can happen without you having had any time to prepare for it and without being able to tie up loose ends or say goodbyes or figure out what your life was worth, that it can just be gone. And so to us, it felt thematically like the perfect story and that it would also trigger all the themes we want to tell this year, which are kind of identity and self and crisis of self and transformation and all these things that you think about a lot when you’re thinking about your own mortality.

How is that going to be affecting the unit going forward? Are they all worried like, am I next? Is that kind of the feeling that we’re going to be getting in Episode 2 and going forward?

Episode 2 is really just an adrenaline ride, and I think you’re in the shock the whole episode. Our hope was that you almost as an audience member feel the same anxiety that Ruzek’s feeling. It’s a real-time episode, so you’re like 42 minutes of being in that moment with Ruzek and feeling what it feels like to have just seen that happen.

And then how it affects the rest of the season is it’s almost always this undercurrent. I think any time that you have a police show and you remind yourself as a writer and also the audience that they are police and that they are going in doors every single day, that they don’t know what’s on the other side, and there is always a threat of danger and violence and a threat to your life, it keeps that reality to it and that authenticity. And so it will be something that I think all of our characters are affected in some way by, but it also is a story that in a nice way, I think, triggers different stories, if that makes sense.

Voight’s clearly struggling. What does that mean for the rest of Intelligence? Ruzek had a near death experience in the premiere, and Voight wasn’t directly the cause, but his actions could be the direct cause of something happening to one of the unit if he continues this way.

Yeah, and I think in a good way at the end of Episode 1, when Chapman [Sara Bues] calls him out and says, you really need to slow down. I think those words sort of settle in him, but it also isn’t a perfect fix. It’s not as if there’s a bow tied on it and he’s just suddenly different. So a lot of that still lingers and a lot of what he’s been dealing with will linger all season. And I think it is about finding a new balance to the unit, which we will find, of realizing other people need to step up. People are going to be promoted. There’s going to be new characters joining the unit. And so it’ll end up feeling like we need that balance restored, so that Voight will also have some balance restored.

Will we see any past characters return this season?

Ooh, good question.

I mean, you did just bring back Olinsky.

I know. Yeah. Never say never. Nothing’s popping up in my mind right now as far as anyone coming back. … Oh, there is somebody coming back. I don’t know if I want to tell you who it is, but there’s somebody coming back that we met last season. That’s exciting. That’s fun.

Can you tease who that’s going to affect the most, or would that be giving it away? 

I think it would be giving it away. You’d know instantaneously.

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Are there any cases coming up that are really going to affect one of the team?

We’ve got some fun ones. We’ve got a really fun one for Cook [Toya Turner], one of her first episodes with us. Episode 5 is a really just a weird one. It’s Cook and Torres [Benjamin Levy Aguilar], and we get to see the pair of them really develop this fun, interesting relationship together. I think they just can see each other and understand each other pretty instantaneously, which is fun. That’s always a great dynamic with somebody, and they have trust pretty quickly with each other. That has an interesting murder mystery vibe to it.

We also have a really interesting past and present case for Voight to explore where he’s looking at a case that he worked quite a long time ago that’s come back to surface again, and so it brings up a lot of who he was then and who he is now and how he’s changed as a person and does he still want to change. That’s an interesting episode. And then just the first two I would say are complete adrenaline rides and were so fun to write and we’re just moving, moving, moving. We just wanted it to be as fast and sort of shot out of a gun, those first two.

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