Chicago PD season 8 predictions: What will happen this season?

What’s going to happen in Chicago PD season 8?

With the new Chicago PD season coming next week, it’s once again time for us to make some predictions regarding what One Chicago fans are about to see.

Chicago PD season 8 has the most hurdles to clear of any One Chicago series. Not only is the show incorporating COVID-19, but we also know that it’s incorporating the topic of police reform for the second time while it tries to address the recent issues surrounding law enforcement. Things for this show have changed drastically between seasons, and it’s anyone’s guess how much all of these things will affect what we’re about to see.

Check out our predictions below and then leave your own ideas in the comments. Then don’t miss the Chicago PD season 8 premiere on Nov. 11 at 10 p.m. on NBC.

1) Atwater’s storyline won’t go on super-long

Season 8 will begin where the seventh season left off, with a cliffhanger that involved Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins)—which is why a lot of viewers were excited about it. We’ve all been asking for more good, meaningful Atwater stories. But don’t expect that means Atwater is going to be front and center during the next season.

While we know that Atwater’s story is going to move foreard in the season premiere, that was before current events gave Chicago PD‘s writers something else to think about. Now, wanting to be timely, they’ve introduced another reform plotline—one that will go on throughout season 8 as the new character involved is recurring. That’s going to take up a lot of time, too. The show can’t balance two major recurring plotlines and a case of the week every week in 42 minutes.

Something’s going to have to be combined or wrapped up, and since Atwater’s plot is a holdover from last season and he tends to not be used as much as other characters, we’re guessing it’ll be his storyline.

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2) The reform story will cause more internal conflict

Reform is coming back to the Intelligence Unit, which could be a great thing if explored well, because the team honestly needs it. But this story idea also opens up a very common pitfall of the show: simplifying things down to an “us vs. them” dynamic.

So many of the team’s interactions with authority figures have been classic plots where the higher-ranking officer is either corrupt or butting heads with Intelligence (or both, such as Denny Woods and Brian Kelton). While introducing a new Deputy Superintendent has potential, it’s also likely that she’ll be regarded as just someone else trying to tell Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) what to do, and Voight will tell her how things get done in his city.

Hopefully that won’t happen, but we’ve rarely seen senior officers who are supportive of Voight and his team. Most of them try to tell him what to do, and he tells them what he’s really going to do, and no progress is ever actually made. If he hasn’t been bothered by Superintendent Crawford (recurring guest star Paul Adelstein), it’s hard to see why he’d feel threatened by a newcomer who is ranked lower than Crawford.

3) Upstead will happen during the season

All the evidence we need for this hunch is above. NBC putting Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) and Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) in a video titled “One Chicago Love Stories” when they’re not even a couple yet makes pretty clear that they will be.

Chicago PD showrunner Rick Eid described the two partners as “falling in love” last season, and indeed, Upton almost spit out something to Halstead after he was shot. Plus, absence has seemed to make Jay’s heart grow fonder based on their brief conversations while Upton was in New York. So the real question is how quickly will it take season 8 to make them a couple?

Expect that it’ll happen on or before the midseason finale. Having a kiss or something similar would be one of those buzzworthy moments that every One Chicago midseason finale strives for, but it’s also possible that the writers don’t want to wait that long and get them together earlier. Let’s just hope this works out better for Jay than the last time he dated his partner.

Next. What's next for Halstead when Chicago PD resumes?. dark

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