‘Chicago P.D.’: Jason Beghe Looks Back on Elias Koteas’ ‘Extremely Beautiful’ Return

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Sergeant Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) was put through it in the Chicago P.D. Season 11 finale—which also included a return from his dead friend, Alvin Olinsky (Elias Koteas), who died after being stabbed in the Season 5 finale.

Voight saw Olinsky while bleeding out while being held by a serial killer. “What’d you get into this time, Hank?” Olinsky asked. “Is this what it felt like?” Voight wondered. “I’m okay to go out like this.” But Olinsky told him, “There’s more. You don’t get to die here.” And he didn’t.

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“Elias is very special to me, and the opportunity for us to have a moment together—I think for him as well—was, I don’t know what the adjective is, but it’s beyond extremely beautiful and very fulfilling and emotional,” Beghe tells TV Insider of what had been his idea. “I don’t think there was a dry eye on the set. I love that man so very much in so many different ways, and it was a treasure.”

Last spring, showrunner Gwen Sigan told us it had “been a long time in the making. Jason actually had this pitch about somehow bringing Elias back. I think to Jason, Elias lives in his head, right? It’s just a part of who Voight is. And so we finally had an opportunity where the stories all converged and made that make sense to bring him back in this way. And yeah, I am just so grateful it worked out, grateful to Elias for coming back and doing it with us, and I was there on set. It was such a special moment to have him back, and he looks exactly the same and we have him in his costume again. We all were just through the roof, crew, cast, everybody.”

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Beghe would also love to see him again. “I thought every few episodes would be good to have Hank sitting down at his breakfast room table having a coffee, talking to Al, Al’s just listening. Al never says anything. And then Voight gets up to close the refrigerator or something and you see that there’s no Olinsky there and it’s all him,” he shares. “‘You’re probably right, Al. Okay, I’ll do that.’ It’s not like Voight’s crazy, but he doesn’t even realize that’s what he’s thinking about. He’s just having a coffee.”

What did you think of Koteas’ return in the Season 11 finale? Would you like to see him again? Let us know in the comments section below.

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