The Chicago P.D. season 14 premiere was jam-packed with action — and a little baby tease — as fans prepare to say goodbye to LaRoyce Hawkins’ Kevin Atwater.
Warning: Spoilers below from season 14, episode 1, of Chicago P.D.
“We will meet that little baby,” showrunner Gwen Sigan exclusively told Us, confirming that viewers will see Atwater’s newborn on screen next week after he received a call during the Wednesday, October 7, premiere that his girlfriend Tasha Fox (Karen Obilom) was in labor.
Sigan revealed, “We get some really nice moments. I think of Atwater with his new family, with this family unit that they have created.”
The showrunner noted that Atwater becoming a father after raising his younger siblings is a “pivotal moment” for the character, and will be documented before he exits the show.
“We’ve seen him be very much fatherly to his siblings that he helped raise, but this is you know this we do see it feel different for him,” Sigan said. “Everything in his life sort of feels different now, and so we get to explore that in the episode and see really you know the moments of stress, sure, but also the moments of joy with a new baby in the house between him and Tasha.”
When it comes to how the show plans to say goodbye to Atwater, who has been playing Hawkins since the series debut in 2014, Sigan told Us it was an “organic” choice to write his character off after he entered a new chapter in life as a parent.
“I think LaRoyce has such a beautiful performance in it, and just the way he showed up [was great],” Sigan shared, teasing that the team gave him the “best send off that we could possibly make for him.”
She added that having Chicago P.D. alum Jesse Lee Soffer — who played Jay Halstead from 2014 to 2022 — return to direct the episode was the cherry on top.
“I’m very grateful for Jesse. I’m very grateful that we got to have somebody in our family direct this episode and I hope you can feel that through the screen,” Sigan continued. “There was a lot of effort and love put into that. So hopefully, hopefully fans can feel it.”
During season 13, Atwater discovered that he was going to be a dad after Tasha got pregnant during their brief romance. When the season ended, Tasha agreed to move to Chicago and give her relationship with Atwater a chance as they prepared to coparent their future child.
As fans waited for the new season, news broke in July that Hawkins would be exiting the NBC series after a few episodes.
“I can never prepare for LaRoyce’s exit because LaRoyce is my ride or die buddy,” Marina Squerciati exclusively told Us on Tuesday, October 6. “But we’re still in touch, and he will be forever in my life.”
Squerciati, 42, confessed that while her character, Kim Burgess, “respects” Atwater’s choice to leave Intelligence, as an actress and friend of Hawkins’ she isn’t thrilled about his absence.
“We’re … losing the Three Musketeers, and it’s really hard,” she told Us, noting that she and Hawkins along with Patrick Flueger, who plays Adam Ruzek, have been on the show since the beginning “and we’ve really been a tight knit group, and I I miss him a lot. That’s very hard for me.”
Chicago P.D. airs NBC Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET.
