Voight is going to change after this devastating Chicago PD death

Chicago PD has never been afraid to get dark, and boy did "The Living and the Dead" live up to its grim title. The episode was, in many ways, a continuation of the previous episode, "Survival", in which Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) went out of his way to protect a teen named Noah (Bobby Hagan).

Voight could sense that Noah was not safe around his family, and preferred to keep him at his own house under the circumstances surrounding Noah's kidnapping and torture could be sorted out.

SPOILERS ahead for Chicago PD 11x07

The bulk of "The Living and the Dead" sees Voight juggle his desire to solve the case, and learn more about the man who perpetrated the kidnapping, with his desire to support Noah and not drum up traumatic memories.

It was a tricky balance. The IU discovers that Noah and another teen named Paul Hansen were abducted by the aforementioned culprit, and tortured in front of each other. Not only that, but these two were the latest in a series of pairs that were abducted and subjected to torture. The two victims found at the beginning of the episode, Izzy and Maria, were subsequently murdered.

The IU engage in a frantic manhunt to track down this killer, but things come to a screeching halt when Noah receives a text from someone claiming to be Paul. Noah chooses to believe Paul is still alive, and went to an unspecified area without police protection. Sure enough, when Voight catches up with him, he's devastated to find that both Paul and Noah are dead.

Voight is going to be traumatized

This was an absolutely devastating way to end the episode, especially given how much Voight had personally invested in this case. It was obvious to anyone familiar with the character's history that he saw parallels between Noah and his late son, Justin (Josh Segarra), so the fact that Noah met a similarly bleak ending is a gut punch that's going to hurt for quite a while.

Jason Beghe alluded to Voight's psychology during an interview with TV Insider, and it's hard to imagine a world in which he doesn't take Noah's death as a personal failure.

He's going to have to come to grips with losing someone he cared about yet again, and the fact that he's older, and able to step back and reflect on the lost ones who came before, is going to have to bubble to the surface.

Related: Chicago PD star teases 'surprises' for S11 finale

Beghe's comments to the outlet take on a tragic strain now that we know what happens to Noah in the end. When asked to sum up the dynamic between the grizzled cop and the tortured victim, he said:

"He's helping Voight, and Voight’s helping him to some degree, I think, trying to help him confront his demons."

Ooof. It's been a while since Chicago PD has delivered such a tragic ending, and we are curious to see what it does to Voight's character for the rest of season 11 and beyond.