SPOILER ALERT AND WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Chicago PD Season 13, Episode 21. It also contains discussion of suicide.
The Chicago PD Season 13 finale answered everyone’s questions about Eva Imani’s sister in typical Chicago PD fashion: by crushing all our hopes and dreams. “Born or Made” may have saved Shari Imani from her captor, but it also revealed that it was Shari who committed murder—and left her in a hospital bed after she attempted to take her own life.
TVBrittanyF.com spoke with Chicago PD executive producer Gwen Sigan and actor Arienne Mandi to discuss the events of the finale. Here’s what they had to say about how things unfolded, and what their hopes are for Season 14. For the first part of our interview, click here.
Brittany Frederick: Gwen, was there any discussion about the finale ending on a marginally happier note, considering how things just keep getting worse and more traumatic for Imani?
Gwen Sigan: We love a complicated ending. We do. We love something bittersweet—the idea you don’t always get what you want. Tou can kind of do everything right [and] you get the wrong result. You do everything wrong, you get the right result. We love all of that grayness.
So no, I don’t think I ever thought we would end super-happy. We knew from the beginning that we wanted Shari to be alive and to be saved, but that saving is obviously very complicated, and what that looks like moving forward. It opens a lot of opportunity for us in the future.
Arienne, these are two very demanding episodes for you as an actor. Do you have a favorite scene, just in terms of what you accomplished?
Arienne Mandi: It’s hard to pick one. These vulnerable moments with [her] sister and finding those. [The] Imani and Shari relationship, it was so delicate that our last two directors, Victor [Macias] and Chad [Saxton], handled so beautifully. There was so much nuance to every moment. We dedicated so much time to finding those moments and the intricacies between the two of us and within ourselves, that the audience gets to see it’s such a complex situation that we’re in. I think any of the scenes with Shari, and with Voight. I can’t pick one.
There’s obviously the cliffhanger of what happens to Shari legally, but now that fans have answers to this mystery, is there anything either of you are excited to explore in Chicago PD Season 14?
Sigan: I want to know what she’s going to be like now that she has this void of purpose and energy. So much of her was devoted to the search for her sister. And I can only imagine the amount of hours every day that Imani would put in. You see her apartment has nothing in it, and she now has nothing to do with those hours. Those hours are now empty. So what the hell is she going to do? I want to see that. What’s she going to do when she goes home? Is she going to go home?
Chicago PD airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC. Photo Credit: Courtesy of NBC.
Article content is (c)2020-2026 Brittany Frederick and may not be excerpted or reproduced without express written permission by the author. Follow me on Twitter at @BFTVTwtr and on Instagram at @BFTVGram. For story pitches, contact me at tvbrittanyf@yahoo.com.
