The One Chicago franchise has achieved many historic moments over the years, but March 2020 happened to bring about one of the franchise’s most ambitious and unexpected moments.
On March 31, 2020, Wolf Entertainment pulled off a rare feat in television by staging a crossover event between two shows airing on competing networks. The event saw Chicago PD’s Tracy Spiridakos making the jump from NBC’s hit procedural over to CBS’s FBI, reprising her role as Detective Hailey Upton in an episode that essentially confirmed the two franchises are set within the same shared universe.
In the episode, Upton headed to New York to participate in what was described as a few weeks of an “interagency training program.” During her visit, Upton teamed up with FBI’s Special Agent OA Zidan (Zeeko Zaki) to work the investigation into the murder of a college student. And this was not just a “cameo” appearance.
Upton played a major role in the episode, working alongside OA and the full FBI team to find the killer – even if her approach to working the case was much different from the Bureau’s buttoned-up environment. She even managed to save OA’s life during the case, pushing him out of the way when he was shot at by an assailant during the investigation. While Upton and OA did not see eye-to-eye through the investigation, Upton earned his respect by the end of the episode, with the pair heading out to get a drink after closing the case.
Following the crossover, there was hope that Wolf Entertainment would be able to pull off additional crossovers between the two franchises. Sadly, though, there has not been a single crossover between the One Chicago and FBI franchises in the years that have followed, with Upton being the only character from either franchise to make an appearance in both the One Chicago and FBI universes.
Looking back, we truly didn’t appreciate how monumental the moment was at the time. While crossover events happen often in TV and there have been many moments in which characters from shows on the same networks have crossed over, it’s not often we see crossovers between competing networks occur.
It was a huge moment to see Upton appear on FBI, and doing so meant that the shows were confirmed to be set within the same shared universe, which is also shared by the Law & Order franchise, which has staged many crossovers with the One Chicago universe over the years.
Interestingly, when NBC brought Spiridakos back in the 2026 One Chicago crossover event, it was revealed that Upton had since joined the FBI. This seems to suggest that it would not at all be a stretch for her to make a future appearance in the FBI franchise on CBS given that it’s been previously established that the shows share the same universe.
Should CBS actually manage to make that a reality by bringing Spiridakos on as a series regular or recurring character, it would be another historic moment for the One Chicago franchise. While we saw Philip Winchester make the move from Chicago Justice to Law & Order: SVU when Chicago Justice was canceled, we’ve never seen a character from the One Chicago franchise move over to the world of FBI in a major capacity.
It’s a move that fans are certainly hoping could happen some day, so we can only hope that perhaps CBS might make NBC’s loss its win by finding a way to add Spiridakos to the FBI cast.