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Chicago P.D. Season 12 ended with a disbanded Intelligence unit, and Season 13 has done its best to put the team back together — with one notable new face, and very different dynamics. The team is no longer facing Deputy Chief Reid (Shawn Hatosy), who died in last year’s finale, and it also has a new face in its midst: Officer Eva Imani (Arienne Mandi).

And the thing about Eva Imani is that she’s the first person on the show in a while who seems to really be speaking Hank Voight (Jason Beghe)’s language, to the point that Chicago P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan went as far as to call her relationship with Voight a “partnership.” And, has Voight truly had a partner since Alvin Olinksy (Elias Koteas) died?

The show’s midseason finale ended with Imani seemingly in danger after she went the extra mile to try to protect Julie, serial killer Raymond Bell’s granddaughter, whom the team suspects is being abused. But what exactly did she find at the Bell house? And is the team even close to taking down Bell? Plus, how does this all tie to whoever is leaving clues about Voight’s childhood for him to find?

And that’s just scratching the surface for the show, which also needs to give us answers about Adam and Kim’s decision to perhaps move to the suburbs for the sake of their daughter Makayla, Kevin Atwater’s next step after yet another romantic disappointment, and whether Dante Torres can figure out what exactly happened in the Odell Morgan case.

Chicago P.D. showrunner Gwen Sigan sat down with us to discuss all of that, how the individual characters deal, how the team is approaching these issues in the writers’ room, and what we can expect to see when the show returns.

TV Guide: This season has given Voight a new white whale, but the dynamic is very different from what he had with Reid last season. Was that exactly what you wanted to do? And how will it develop as the show returns?
Gwen Sigan: Yeah, that’s exactly what we wanted to do. We really wanted something that would tell an emotional story for Voight, and tell some backstory and things that we hadn’t explored yet, which really felt like his childhood. I mean, we haven’t learned a lot. We know his dad lost his life in the line of duty. We know that bit, but there was never a whole lot of detail about what his past was on the show. And he’s such a hard character to get it out of because he doesn’t talk about those things.

So how can we, you know? How could we shake him up? And we were really intent on wanting to do a different thing this year that didn’t feel like Reid, because Reid was so good. Last year, we wanted to do something that felt unique. So that’s really how it came about in the room, was trying to manage those two things.

And it’s a really simple storyline, which I think is nice for us. You know, there’s a simple motivation behind it. We’re going to hear a lot about it in Episode 8, and sort of the standoff between those two and how it resolves itself, and how Voight attacks it is different. It’s just a… I think, for him, a uniquely personal attack, which feels more emotional. And in a lot of ways, I think, for him, it feels worse than somebody like Reid, who I think he could sort of understand, right? Like, I think he could understand that even though Reid was very twisted in his motives, he believed that what he was doing was for the greater good, whereas this attack is really just “I want to hurt you.” So yeah, it’s different.

You brought in a new member of Intelligence this season in Eva Imani, who’s very much a mirror to Voight, but perhaps a different one that he’s had in a while with Jay or Hailey. Can you talk about the intentionality in building that dynamic to be something new? How will that continue to develop?
Sigan: We wanted someone who would come in and be so sure of themselves and have a sense of self. Someone that was sort of unwavering and didn’t think they needed anything from anybody, and was certainly, I think a fully formed person who has this inner life — that we’re going to explore a lot of coming up, and sort of why she’s here, what she’s all about, her past, what makes her this way — but also I think someone who believes like, “I can just keep to myself” and “I’m not gonna get attached to anybody here. I’m gonna do my own thing.”

And yet, she gets attached to Voight, right? Like, we’ve already started to see it. We’ve already started to see these two people who think they live on islands, these lone wolves, but they’re going to, whether or not they want to, become partners. And we’re already seeing the start of that, so that was really the intent with her and Voight, and then she’s also got this interesting backstory that we’ve really enjoyed writing.

I think the mirror of it all has become a lot more than just how it starts, which is certainly this instinctive and pulsive nature. But we see that there’s a deeper sort of connection and things going on between the two of them that, yeah, it’s just been fun to write. They’re so good on screen together.

It feels a bit closer to his relationship with Erin than any other relationship he’s had, in that he treats her like an equal.
Sigan: Yeah, I agree with you. I think he really does see her as almost a peer, which is great, like a confidant. Yeah, it builds much more through this season. It’s been great.

We also have Adam and Kim, and they’re now facing obstacles outside of their relationship instead of inside the relationship. But they have a kid, and they have to figure out what’s best for her and how and where they build their family. What does that look like for them going forward?
Sigan: I loved that episode; I loved Episode 3 this season [“Canaryville”]. I thought it was such an interesting look at the pair of them and also their own separate roots. Like, what does that place mean to Ruzek, but then also what does it mean to your child? And does it mean the thing that you want it to mean? Because you can’t give them exactly what you had as much as you want to, and we come back to that this season. In the second half of the season, you’ll see us coming back to that same question.

They haven’t made a decision yet at the end of Episode 3, and we see that they’re sort of trying to figure out the answers to that, and what they want to do, but then how do you know what’s right for your kid, how can you predict it?

And we’ll also learn that Bob (Ruzek, Adam’s father) has not been in good health. We explored that last season and obviously he’s not moving upward. He’s sort of declining and so, there’s that attachment to Canaryville and what the house that Ruzek grew up in means to him. And how do you make a decision when you’re that emotionally vulnerable, that would take you away from all of that, but might be better for your kid?

We had to explore a lot of it, and I think it’s nice. They’re able to sort of individually come to places through certain episodes that just explore them outside of each other, but then it all brings them back to the family in it. So, it’s been fun this year, like now that they’re married to also make it outside of just the unit, outside of just the two of them, what else are they exploring that can inform their family. It’s fun.

Then there’s Kevin, and if I were him, I’d be swearing off love or at least taking a sabbatical. How’s he dealing with the bad luck that he’s had, romance-wise?
Sigan: Yeah, we will continue to explore it this season. It is not off the table. I don’t think he has sworn it off yet. But what I liked about Tasha (Fox), played by Karen Obilom, who joined us in Episode 5, was that they had such great chemistry on screen. But I also think she was such a challenge to him, in the fact that she knows exactly what she wants in that episode, which I liked, and she pushed him to start thinking in that way too. Like, what do you actually want outside of the things that are going smoothly and are making sense right now?

What do you want for you? Which is something he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about. I think his instinct is to think about other people before himself. And so, we get to explore that. We have an episode, Episode 11, that is all Atwater. It’s a really fun ride. And we start with that question. I was like: What does this guy want? If he’s feeling like he’s stuck in the status quo, what else does he want?

Finally, Dante. This man has very much not dealt with his trauma, and it feels like every time we get an episode about him, he just adds more. Is he ever going to do some self-reflection, maybe get therapy?
Sigan: I know, right? Yes, he is going to deal with it. I loved Episode 6, the one where he sort of hinted a lot at this idea of divine intervention and I think that case and meeting Odell Morgan and having faith in this man who, there really wasn’t that many reasons to have faith in him, but yet he felt that pull and he did, and he was right. I think it got him to a level of… a little bit out of what he was feeling.

And then when we see him again in Episode 10, which is his next sort of all-in on Torres episode. He is now sort of sitting with that reminder of this idea that he has tattooed on his back, which is like: “I am here, send me.” That Bible verse that he lives by and that reminder of what that foundation is brings him into this case, where he’s still exploring what happened to Odell, he’s still exploring why was this man framed, and who actually killed his wife. Who actually killed Carter? And we see the hours that he puts into this cold case. And it starts representing, in our minds as writers, it was representing like the hours of returning to faith in something, right?

That you go back and you go back and it’s not easy, but that the work is a part of it. So, that helps him a lot and is very healing for him. And then in the next part of the season, we see him, now that he’s sort of dealt a bit with that crisis of faith and has sort of found faith again, what does his religion look like? And then what does it look like in terms of sort of filtering into his job and how he sees policing and what he is showing up to do every day. So, he’s a bit of a different person by the second half of a season.

So yeah, has he dealt with all this in therapy? No, no, but he’s trying. He’s trying to… he tries to sew himself up back up together in some way, yeah.