This season’s One Chicago character departures, ranked

2. Alvin Olinsky on Chicago PD

Though losing Dawson is a huge blow, we’d argue that the exit of Alvin Olinsky is an even sadder moment for One Chicago. Many Chicago PD fans still aren’t over it, and we wouldn’t blame them if they never get over it—for a variety of reasons.

First and foremost, unlike Monica Raymund, it wasn’t Elias Koteas’s decision to leave Chicago PD. It was the show’s decision to write him out, according to showrunner Rick Eid. So the series took one of its best and most beloved actors, and handed him his walking papers. It’s the kind of choice that is automatically sad.

Why get rid of an actor who wants to stay, and whom the fans want to stay? Why did you have to break our hearts like that, One Chicago?

But Olinsky’s death is even more painful for fans, because the justification given for it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. According to Eid’s commentary, Olinsky died because Hank Voight had to pay some kind of price—but Olinsky was killed by a whole other character introduced during the fifth season finale “Homecoming” who had nothing to do with Voight.

His death felt like it was done for shock value, and not for any kind of reason that made sense, let alone a reason that was worthy of how much Olinsky and Elias Koteas had contributed over the last five seasons.

There are a lot of reasons why Chicago PD will regret that decision. But Olinsky’s death was a true tear-jerker moment, not just for the Intelligence Unit but for the fans, because it was such a big plot twist and wound up being so unnecessary.

Not only that, but the network later posted a tribute scene that was cut from the episode only to take it off YouTube shortly thereafter. So not only did we not get to really mourn Olinsky, we did not get to see the team do it either. Of course there’s still going to be plenty of sadness when we haven’t even gotten an opportunity to grieve yet.