Spoilers ahead for Episode 4 of Chicago P.D. Season 11, called "Escape."
Dante Torres returned from his two-month furlough in Chicago P.D.'s fourth episode in the 2024 TV schedule, but he didn't exactly ease himself back into the action of the Intelligence Unit. The officer immediately went undercover to try and get some hard proof against a Chicago drug trafficker, which involved recruiting the trafficker's wife as a very reluctant CI. By the end, Torres may have made a very big mistake with her, but actor Benjamin Levy Aguilar opened up to CinemaBlend about what was actually quite easy.
Torres had been on furlough for a couple of months to take care of his mother, who was very ready for him to stop hovering by the beginning of "Escape." He informed Atwater that he'd promised God that he'd always do the right thing if he let his mom live, which... really makes me wonder if he thinks he did the right thing at the end of this episode. Aguilar previewed that Torres "thinks he's okay" at the beginning of the episode; whether that's the case by the end is open to interpretation.
Sparks were flying between Torres and Gloria (played by Bull's Yara Martinez), the wife of the trafficker who was trapped in her situation with her husband. In the final minutes of the episode, Gloria began to panic that she'd risked everything for the cops, only for them to not get the evidence they needed against her husband, and the case remains open. One thing led to another, and she and Torres were kissing passionately outdoors on a snowy Chicago night.
And Torres clearly didn't hear about Camila Vega from his temporary mentor Jay Halstead before Jesse Lee Soffer's departure in early Season 10, because getting romantically involved with somebody due to an undercover gig doesn't end well! When I spoke with Benjamin Levy Aguilar for this episode, he shared what it was like to work with Yara Martinez as Torres and Gloria:
It was so easy from the start. We clicked. [laughs] It was like we were like best friends. We were just cracking up on set together and just like laughing and talking in Spanish. We were really free. We were pretty much very comfortable since the beginning, so it made it a lot easier to have all those also intimate scenes and stuff. When you have someone that you can trust and someone that you're comfortable with, it makes it all so easy.
Aguilar – born in Guatemala – previously spoke about enjoying getting to speak Spanish as Torres in Season 10, and pitched a fun idea for a fully Spanish episode. He was able to speak Spanish with Yara Martinez, and it seems that they had a great working relationship. The characters' dynamic didn't quite match the actors', however. When I asked if it's safe to say that he and Martinez are very different from their character, Aguilar responded:
Yeah, I think so. I mean... I've always wondered. Sometimes I think I'm very similar to him in a lot of ways, and then in some ways, I'm very different.
Fortunately, Benjamin Levy Aguilar's circumstances are quite different from his character's. The actor already opened up about pushing himself for the waterboarding scenes of Season 10; Torres pushed himself in some ways to the point of shocking himself. He went on to say that "hopefully" one of the ways he's different from Torres is less of the daily trauma!
The promo for the next episode indicates that the focus is going to shift over to Atwater, which reignites my hope to see LaRoyce Hawkins' character make detective this season. Gloria's case is still open, however, which all but guarantees that the Intelligence Unit will revisit her case before the end of Season 11.
For now, you can look forward to the next episode of Chicago P.D. on Wednesday, February 21 at 10 p.m. ET on NBC, and check out earlier episodes of the series streaming with a Peacock Premium subscription.
