Chicago PD said goodbye to Alvin Olinsky in the Chicago PD season 5 finale, but here’s why the show will regret axing Elias Koteas’s character.
Wednesday’s Chicago PD season finale shocked fans when it revealed that Detective Alvin Olinsky had died from the jailhouse attack he suffered in the season’s penultimate episode. His death is a huge blow to the series, and one we believe it will come to regret.
As played by Elias Koteas for more than 100 episodes, Olinsky was one of the most experienced members of Chicago PD‘s Intelligence Unit. His lengthy history with boss Hank Voight, plus his dry way of looking at the world, made him a favorite with many of the show’s fans. And now that he’s gone, the show will have a big hole to fill going into next fall’s sixth season.
Showrunner Rick Eid told TVLine that Olinsky’s death was a creative decision as part of the ongoing Voight and Denny Woods storyline, not Elias Koteas’s decision. But Wednesday makes Koteas the second original cast member to depart Chicago PD in two seasons, and what we do know for sure is that there are a lot of reasons one could argue that writing him out was not a good idea.
Click through the below slideshow for the 5 reasons we believe Chicago PD will regret the death of Alvin Olinsky, and leave us your opinions on the season finale’s big plot twist in the comments at the end of this article.
5. He had a unique voice
Alvin Olinsky was unlike any other character on Chicago PD. Not only that, but he was unlike most of the characters that you see on TV cop dramas. Most shows focus on cops that are younger, or better-looking, or somehow special like they’re great at their jobs or have some kind of quirk. In Olinsky, we had none of those things—and that’s what made him stand out in a crowded genre.
Not to detract from any of those other TV cops, many of which we love, but Olinsky felt so much like a real cop. He wasn’t some twentysomething handsome guy out chasing down bad guys and looking cool doing it; so what? He didn’t have an interoffice romance; he had his troubled marriage to Meredith (which, our hearts are breaking just imagining how she reacted to the news of Alvin’s death!).
He wasn’t some kind of supercop; he got where he was by working hard and keeping his head down—so far down that there was that running gag in the early episodes where Voight would forget Olinsky had even shown up for work! Even his name wouldn’t be considered cool; the best known Alvin is an animated chipmunk.
But all these things made Alvin Olinsky special. He provided the perspective of a veteran cop from another era. He let his work speak for him, and it said a lot. He gave us an older character when TV is usually full of younger points of view. There was so much he brought to the table that we don’t have anymore, and it won’t be easy to replace.
4. He was an ally for Voight
One of the great recurring elements of Chicago PD was the long-running friendship between Alvin Olinsky and Hank Voight (Jason Beghe). The two shared more than a few drinks and long talks, and they could always speak to each other in a frank way that they didn’t necessarily with the show’s other characters. And as the final scene of the season finale showed, Voight really needs an ally like Olinsky in his life.
Loyalty is the paramount virtue on Chicago PD, which has cultivated this idea of the Intelligence Unit against the world. No one in the show’s main cast would dare turn against Voight, even as the show has had many of them suffer because of their dedication to their team and their boss (which was a point illustrated again this season, never moreso than in Olinsky’s storyline). There was no one more loyal to Voight than Olinsky, which led to Woods telling Voight “he dedicated his life to you.”
But through a variety of circumstances the show has chipped away at Voight’s bubble. When Sophia Bush chose to leave the series after Chicago PD season 4, that removed Erin Lindsay, who was like a daughter to him. That’s not the show’s fault, but it’s still something that the series has to deal with and factor in as it chooses where its characters go. Now by killing off Olinsky, that’s both of Voight’s biggest supporters who aren’t there anymore. Who is going to be Voight’s shoulder to lean on now? Who will rein him in?
The only series regular who has that pre-series history with Voight left is Trudy Platt (Amy Morton). But she doesn’t get a lot of scenes, since Platt works mostly behind the desk at the district and not with the rest of the team—and in the last few episodes of Chicago PD season 5 she was mostly absent anyway.
Does Chicago PD beef up Platt’s role to give Voight that old friend he needs? Or how exactly is it going to fill that hole? It’s something Voight will have to figure out next season, but it’s also a very real question for the writers that they’ve now forced themselves to answer.
3. His final season wasn’t great
If Alvin Olinsky had to go, and if the writers knew this was the direction they wanted to take, then he deserved a bigger season on his way out. When we look back on Chicago PD season 5 as a whole, it will not be remembered as one of the best seasons for Elias Koteas or his character.
Olinsky got a fair amount of screen time this season, because of his proximity to Voight and then how he got caught up in the Voight vs. Denny Woods (Mykelti Williamson) storyline. But a lot of it wasn’t great. There was a downright cringe-worthy moment in “Payback” when it revealed that he was so desperate not to be indicted for Jason Bingham’s murder that he planted drugs on the one witness Woods had.
Now we get it: nobody wants to be indicted for murder, especially one that they know they didn’t commit. But c’mon, Olinsky! You planted drugs on a man you know is a recovering drug addict. And by doing so, you quite possibly ruined his life, because he got busted for it and the last time we saw him, his poor wife was just yelling at him. You were willing to let an innocent man fall and wreck all the hard work he’d done to turn his life around, just to maintain your own innocence.
It was a moment that not only was shocking, but it actively made us dislike Olinsky. And for a lot of the second half of the season, Olinsky was pretty much a passive character, a pawn in the Woods vs. Voight struggle. Everything that happened with him was in relation to Voight, and most of it was happening to him, up to and including him being stabbed to death.
Compare that to Chicago PD season 4, where he had some fantastic episodes like “Emotional Proximity” and “Favor, Affection, Malice or Ill Will.” Sure, his daughter died, but that gave Elias Koteas the chance to do some phenomenal work. And Olinsky as a fake hitman was one of the most moving episodes of that season. We had no such big episode this season. We didn’t even get one last great hero moment.
To be fair, this assumes that the writers were aware that this would be the end of Olinsky—that they came to the conclusion they were going to kill his character off enough in advance to plot with that in mind. That may not have been the case; this could have been a decision they didn’t settle on until later in the season when some of these things were already done. But if there was anything that could’ve been done, we wish they would’ve done more.
2. It could’ve been written better
Okay, so Chicago PD for one reason or another had to have Alvin Olinsky die. Fine. Even if we accept that, the actual circumstances surrounding his death are something that the show could have handled very differently.
We learned in “Homecoming” that Olinsky was targeted by a drug lord he had once investigated as part of a DEA task force, as revenge for how that investigation had killed Carlos DeLeon’s brother. His murder was revenge for something that had happened years ago, that his colleagues (and the fans) just now learned about.
It felt like Olinsky’s equivalent of Jay Halstead’s randomly appearing ex-wife. Yes, the plot made logical sense, but it wasn’t satisfying from a story or character development perspective. Fans may have thought that Woods put somebody up to attacking Olinsky, and if you think about that for a second, even though it was obvious it would’ve actually been a better idea.
First of all, it had a better logical foundation because that’s the story we’ve been tracking all season long. Woods wouldn’t want Olinsky to die, but having him injured would be another wayto put pressure on Voight. And we know that Woods has unethical ways of doing things; that was how his character was introduced back in Chicago PD season 4!
Plus, Denny being directly involved in Olinsky’s murder would’ve enraged both Voight and the audience—building up even more anticipation for the final showdown between Voight and Woods, which could’ve turned into an actual fight. (But that’s a discussion for another article.) Especially if the intent of killing Olinsky was to punish Voight, why not make the person going after Voight the one responsible?
Yes, Woods is connected to Olinsky’s death because he’s the one who had Olinsky put in jail in the first place, but only coincidentally so. He didn’t tip DeLeon off or collude with him. The exact circumstances of Olinsky’s death were a whole separate thing. And that’s why they didn’t have as much impact, because a plotline created for one episode can’t compare to a story that Chicago PD has had us invest a whole season into.
1. His death had no purpose
The biggest reason why Chicago PD will regret killing Alvin Olinsky is that killing him had no real meaning. There was no reason why he had to die or why his death was somehow worthwhile in the end.
Compare Olinsky’s exit story to that of Erin Lindsay. We were sad that she left, but we knew that she left because she really didn’t have a choice. She could technically still have fought for her job in Chicago, but she was likely going to lose that fight—or she could go to New York, take the FBI’s deal that helped her mother, and get a fresh start. It was bad for us, but we understood it and we felt it was a natural conclusion to her story.
The death of Alvin Olinsky didn’t have any of that. If Olinsky had died in one of Chicago PD‘s many shootouts, perhaps literally taking a bullet for Voight or Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati), that would’ve had purpose. We would’ve appreciated his sacrifice and he’d have died a hero, instead of getting killed over something we only heard about. If you understand what leads up to a character death, it makes it more real and gives it more depth than the backstory happening off-screen.
Or if he’d gotten out of jail and decided to walk away, putting his quality of life above his loyalty to Voight for once, that would have had purpose. It would’ve been more interesting than Olinsky just spending the last few weeks repeating how much he’s “got this” over and over again. And it wouldn’t have required changing anything in the Chicago PD season finale, because Voight could still freak out over Olinsky leaving rather than dying.
According to Eid’s TVLine statement, the idea of Olinsky’s death is that he paid for Voight’s sin. That the show wants us to be uncomfortable and frustrated at his death. But what would’ve been so much better than that message would’ve been seeing Olinsky go out for a reason that had meaning for his character, whether it was known to Voight or not. Not as a prop in someone else’s storyline, even Voight’s.
It would’ve always sucked to see him die, but for the fans to know that it was in some meaningful way or that we went through some memorable experience because of it—that closure would’ve made it a lot easier for fans to swallow. And while we can appreciate leaving Voight hanging, Chicago PD viewers deserved to be left with something to hold onto after all that Alvin Olinsky had meant to the unit, the show and the fans.
Next: Why Chicago PD should've ended with Voight's arrest
Did you agree or disagree with Chicago PD‘s decision to kill off Alvin Olinsky? Let us know your thoughts on the latest plot twist in the comments.
Chicago PD airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC.