Chicago PD season 7 character review: Hailey Upton

Our prognosis

It’s obvious that when Chicago PD season 8 premieres, Upton will return from New York at some point; though the season is going to start right where season 7 left off, the writers can’t have her character missing in action for too long. A few months could be several episodes in show time, or there could be a time jump and it gets whittled down to an episode or two. Or maybe she just comes back to Chicago early when she hears what’s happened. But expect that she’ll be back sooner rather than later.

Once she gets back, the best course of action would be if Hailey returned to Intelligence a changed woman and got the message that Voight was trying to teach. But that seems unlikely; the writers seem to like her as a sort of psuedo-Voight. So don’t be surprised if the show considers that whole issue handled already and moves past it in order to have Upton back to work as usual. No one has ever doubted the way Intelligence does things for very long.

Then there’s the Upstead of it all. Chicago PD showrunner Rick Eid has confirmed that an Upton and Halstead romance is going to happen, saying to TVLine that “they’re falling in love with each other,” so when will that finally take place? Our guess would be in or before the midseason finale for maximum effect—just wait and see, though, if either of them address that they’ve previously dated their partners before, including Upton having worked with Halstead’s ex Erin Lindsay. Their new affair should have issues, and lots of them.

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