Spoilers ahead for the Season 5 finale of Chicago P.D., called "Homecoming."
The penultimate episode of Chicago P.D. Season 5 ended on a bloody and heartbreaking cliffhanger that saw poor Alvin Olinsky shanked repeatedly in the belly while stuck in prison for a murder he didn't commit. That episode ended without revealing Olinsky's fate, and fans had to spend the week wondering if he would live. Well, the Season 5 finale only took about five minutes to drop the devastating bombshell: Olinsky died from his wounds. Chicago P.D. will have to go on without him. (Check out why that big death happened.)
Of course, Voight being Voight, he couldn't just mourn Olinsky when the murder was unsolved, and he crossed a lot of lines in the course of the investigation. All the cops got their hands dirty in how they interrogated suspects, and the bullets flew pretty freely. Only Antonio showed much in the way of hesitation for how they were conducting their investigation as a quest for revenge. Voight and Co. did ultimately figure out that Olinsky was targeted in prison due to his work on a D.E.A. task force years previous.
Voight was facing more in "Homecoming" than just his own need to avenge Olinsky. After all, the only reason Olinsky was behind bars was because Voight was allowing Olinsky to take the fall for the murder of Bingham. Yes, Olinsky was guilty of helping Voight hide the body, and Olinsky hadn't been convicted of anything, but he was stuck in the clink because Voight didn't cop to the murder. Voight was on the verge of coming clean to Denny Woods at the end of the previous episode, and he even admitted what had happened off-the-record in the beginning of "Homecoming" before he learned of the stabbing. After he got the bad news about his friend, all of his focus shifted to solving the mystery of who had Olinsky killed.
Or so it seemed. As it turns out, Voight was multitasking in "Homecoming." While he and the other cops were attempting to hunt down the people responsible for poor Olinsky's death, Voight set a plan in motion that could free him of any danger of going to prison for Bingham's death. He planted a fake witness to reach out to Denny Woods with a story about how she'd seen Voight kill Bingham. She seemed credible to Denny, to the point that he gave in when she demanded $20,000 for her testimony. He even went so far as to tell her to make her story sound all the more damning since he was giving her a big payday.
Well, when Denny and Voight met up at the end of the hour, Denny magnanimously offered Voight the chance to plead guilty to manslaughter and only serve five or seven years in prison. Instead, Voight revealed that he'd planted to witness, and Denny was on the hook with Internal Affairs for bribing a witness. The threat posed by Denny to Voight is no more, and all signs point toward Voight getting away with Bingham's murder for good. He lost Olinsky, but he kept his freedom and his job.
Voight may also be on the hook for another incident: he shot the man responsible for Olinsky's death when he was surrendering, and witnesses saw him do it. Antonio wasn't inclined to back him up when he wasn't 100% sure what had actually happened. All things considered, the Season 5 finale set the stage for a very different Season 6. Olinsky won't be around, Denny is out of the game, Voight could be in trouble for the shooting, tensions may continue to grow with Antonio, and Voight may continue to struggle with the knowledge that Olinsky's death is on him.
The good news is that Chicago P.D. just scored a renewal order and will be back for Season 6 in the fall, along with the other two Chicago-based series and Law and Order: SVU. For your viewing options while we wait for more Chicago P.D. action, take a look at our summer TV premiere schedule and our 2018 Netflix premiere guide.
