Chicago Justice season 2: 3 scenes we wanted

3. Atwater’s return

One of the highlights of Chicago Justice season 1 was the guest appearance by LaRoyce Hawkins, when his Chicago PD character Kevin Atwater found himself being prosecuted after a man he had arrested died in custody. That episode “Uncertainty Principle” was one of the season’s best.

But continuity got a little squirrelly after that. Atwater returned for a later episode, seemingly chill with the State’s Attorney’s team even after they’d put him on trial (because, as LaRoyce Hawkins explained in our interview, his second episode was shot before his first).

Anna Valdez (Monica Barbaro) later turned up in Chicago PD season 5 and had direct interaction with Atwater, trying to convince his younger brother Jordan to testify in a murder case, but their past didn’t come up then either.

So had there been a Chicago Justice season 2, it would have been warranted—and honestly, kind of deserved—to see a scene where Atwater returned to the State’s Attorney’s Office and buried the hatchet. Obviously things are okay with him now; he’s a professional. But he didn’t just snap his fingers and get over almost going to prison.

Perhaps Valdez could have called him in on another police-related case, something with a similar grey area, to learn from their shared experience. Atwater could have helped them prove the innocence of another officer, essentially flipping the script from “Uncertainty Principle.” However it happened, there’s so much possibility in the Atwater character that deserved to be explored.