Heading into the upcoming season of Chicago PD, it’s fair to admit that we’ve been a bit hyperfocused on how the show will write LaRoyce Hawkins out of the show. As a result, we haven’t really spent much of the summer talking about the big picture and what could be coming our way from the season. Well, that has changed following the release of the new Chicago PD season 14 trailer, which NBC released via Peacock!
The new season 14 trailer has revealed that the opening episode of Chicago PD’s new season will find the Intelligence Unit working a case that results in an officer being shot in the line of duty.
Before your panic sets in, don’t worry, one of our core Intelligence Unit members is thankfully not the person in the line of fire, at least in this instance.
As the Chicago PD season 14 trailer opens, we hear Imani calling in for units after shots are fired. We then see her kneeling on the ground beside a plainclothes officer who has been shot and is in bad shape. She assures him that an ambulance is on the way, but his fate is left up in the air, and we have to wonder whether he might not survive. This is because, later in the trailer, we see Trudy suiting up in protective gear and hitting the streets alongside the Intelligence Unit, which doesn’t happen every day.
Knowing that Trudy is about to enter the field, we have to imagine that the show might be opening the season with the officer being killed in the line of duty. This would explain why Trudy joins Voight and his team in the field, as she’s been known to take action and not ride the desk when someone in the department has been injured or killed in the line of duty.
There is, of course, a bigger element at play here that we should address, and that’s how this premiere storyline should actually give fans the chance to breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief.
We know that Hawkins is leaving the show, but there have been a lot of questions surrounding the circumstances of his exit, including how the show will write Atwater out of the series. There has been concern that the show could opt to kill him off, with Atwater dying in the line of duty; however, if the show were going to take that route, we imagine the show wouldn’t have some random officer we’ve never met be injured or potentially killed in the line of duty in the episode just before Hawkins is set to leave the show.
Sure, the show might recycle plot lines every once in a while, but there’s just no way the show would choose to kill off an unnamed cop in the premiere and then kill Atwater the following episode.
Of course, death was always the storyline that felt the most unlikely for the character. While Chicago PD has killed off core characters before, it typically prefers to leave the door open for departing actors to return, and we’ve always felt that was the route they’d likely take with Atwater. After all, the character is such a beloved part of the show’s DNA and we know fans are hoping we could see him return in the future in a manner similar to how Jesse Lee Soffer and Tracy Spiridakos returned in the 2026 One Chicago crossover event following their exits years prior.
With the season less than a month away, we should find out soon how the show will handle Atwater's exit, but if the trailer for the premiere is any indication, it doesn't look like we have to worry about them killing the character off. That is, of course, the entire premiere was designed to give us a false sense of security, but we're choosing to see the glass half full here and take the premiere storyline as a hint that Atwater will be okay.
Chicago PD season 14 premieres Wednesday, October 7, at 10/9c on NBC!
Add us as a preferred source on Google