Chicago PD season 8 character preview: Hailey Upton

What should happen

By the end of Chicago PD season 8, Upton will have been a series regular on the show for as many seasons as the character she replaced, Erin Lindsay (played by Sophia Bush). How time flies—and how she’s grown into an incredibly prominent character over the last three seasons and counting.

That’s created a sort of love-hate relationship with certain fans, who have noticed that Upton has gotten a lot of screen time and some of the show’s biggest storylines, especially over the last two seasons. Season 8 would be a good time to address some of that criticism. It would be good to see Upton in more of a support role in certain episodes, helping other characters and developing her relationships with those characters further—remember the episode where she and Burgess were working together? That was great, and it allowed both characters to shine.

Plus, Upton’s mostly been portrayed as a tough but angsty heroine. We haven’t seen a lot of her lighter side, and Tracy Spiridakos definitely has one. Granted, Chicago PD is not the best show for humor, but there has to be more to Hailey than her terrible childhood and her burgeoning tension with Halstead. Even if it’s just a line or two in an episode, we could learn more about her and give the audience a deeper picture of who she is. Most of what we’ve picked up on her in the past two seasons has been who she’s sleeping with or about her upbringing.

Tracy Spiridakos has always done well in the role, but who is Hailey Upton these days? First she was presented as a kind of anti-Voight, now she’s become a sort of female Voight. For all the show has given the character to do, it’s basically been in one direction; reducing her screen time and then broadening it a bit could actually help her.