Dante Torres (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) has had us worried in Chicago PD season 12. The character has been positioned as a core member of the IU, and yet, it seems like he's unable to string together more than a few weeks in a row where he's not contending with a personal crisis.
Torres is the least consistent IU member in terms of presence (he missed two episodes in a row recently), and his romantic involvement with an informant in season 11 has played a large role in the current blackmail situation the IU finds itself in with Chief Deputy Charlie Reid (Shawn Hatosy). All this has largely been unremarked on, which made us worried about Torres' future. "Demons," however, finally dealt with these character issues head on.
Dante Torres comes clean to Voight
Torres did not start off the episode on a good foot. He showed up to work with his arm in a sling and an exhausted expression on his face. He disobeyed direct orders from Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) to not give chase to carjackers, and wound up crashing his vehicle. Then, Reid confronted Torres and demanded that follow his orders over Voight's. It looked like things were heading toward a very bad conclusion for Torres, but he made the right decision.
The troubled officer called Voight up and came clean. He admitted that Reid approached him separately, and explained why he had been acting so strange as of late. The guilt he feels over the informant affair, coupled with the fact that IU is being blackmailed, has sent him into a tailspin. He told Voight that he's been suffering from insomnia over the past few weeks, which is why he has missed work. The only reason he came back so soon was because he didn't want Voight to replace him.
The character bonds with Voight over the Reid conflict
This heart-to-heart is the best Torres moment we've gotten in season 13. The character finally laid his cards on the table, and is aligned with Voight in a way that we've yet to really see before. Admitting to his troubles is the first step in fixing them, and there's a newfound sense of unity between Voight and Torres, given their common enemy in Reid.
"Demons" doesn't offer any solutions with regard to getting rid of Reid, but it does give the members of the IU to get on the same page, and realize what they're up against. We went into the episode with a concern that Torres would bend the knee to Reid and sink further into corruption, but the character chose the moral path, and we can suddenly envision a future in which he remains a vital IU member.