Chicago PD season 6 character preview: Kevin Atwater

Where we left off

Chicago PD season 5 was another quiet year for Kevin Atwater. The good news is that this season, he didn’t find himself on trial for the death of a suspect, and facing the end of his career as well as time behind bars (as he did last season in the Chicago Justice episode “Uncertainty Principle”).

But just like that was Atwater’s biggest episode last season, this most recent season basically threw Atwater a brief spotlight and then didn’t really utilize him beyond that. At least in the fifth season, he got two featured episodes instead of one and they were on his own show, but he still wound up drawing the short straw.

The episode “Snitch” gave him plenty of screen time, but also started a storyline that ended in the next installment “Home” with the worst possible outcome—Atwater having to send his younger brother and sister away to Texas, because he feared for their lives after Jordan agreed to testify as a witness in a murder case.

It was great to see more of Atwater with his family, and more of LaRoyce Hawkins, but it also took away something that meant the world to the character and something that was special about his story.

Later in the season there was “Captive” which got him abducted and injured. Again, fantastic to have more for LaRoyce Hawkins to do, but why did all of Atwater’s featured episodes have to be with terrible things happening to him? Certainly there have to be better ideas.