Chicago PD Fans Are Livid After Halstead's Bizarre Season 10 Exit
Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Chicago P.D." Season 10, Episode 3
Jesse Lee Soffer's final episode of "Chicago P.D." has aired, and fans of the series are saying goodbye to Jay Halstead. After news of the actor's departure made headlines in August, viewers began expressing their disappointment online. It only worsened after Season 10, Episode 2, when Jay seemed out of character and not like the man many had watched grow since Season 1. Hailey (Tracy Spiridakos) and Jay were majorly out of sync in Episode 2, something you wouldn't expect of a newly married couple. It seemed like the show was laying the foundation for the inevitable split of Upstead, and it's now played out on screen.
From the beginning of Episode 3, Jay is more unlike himself than ever. He's making bad promises in the box, doing no-knocks, lying to Hailey constantly, and walking in Voight's (Jason Beghe) shadow. It's not immediately evident why he's behaving this way, and it only got worse from his odd antics in Episode 2. Jay eventually kills a suspect after busting into a warehouse with no warrant. This (should) cost any officer their badge. Voight and Hailey immediately plan out a cover-up, but Jay wants no part of it.
Jay resigns from the unit and takes a job with the Army fighting cartels in Bolivia. He does all of this without telling Hailey, and she is understandably devastated. The kicker here is that they don't seem to break up, despite him telling her he has to leave THAT SAME DAY. The way Jay's story is wrapped up is so bizarre and fans were absolutely furious on Twitter.
Chicago P.D. fans are furious over the reason for Halstead's exit
In true Dick Wolf fashion, eight years of character development were washed away in the blink of an eye. After saying goodbye to Voight at the airport, Jay is off to Bolivia with no goodbyes to the rest of his colleagues. "THIS IS NOT HOW IT ENDS," @heavenzsecret tweeted after the final Halstead episode. "Jays exit from the show was terrible.... I expected a lot more drama and flare," @kaseskamille added. Hailey shed only a few tears, but as the Twitter user said, it was not a very dramatic episode for an OG's departure.
"Jay forgot he's married and didn't bother to discuss with his wife before making a such a drastic, on the spot decision. Smdh," @grios1979 said of Halstead's odd behavior. "This is absolute bull. Jay would NEVER leave like this. You destroyed 10 years of growth in 3 episodes. Why do this? This is so rushed and so poorly written," @always_wins added to the fire. We still don't know why Jesse Lee Soffer exited "Chicago P.D.," but with how weird his final episodes were, it doesn't seem like this was a story that was in the works for some time. "I get Jay would break at some point but doing it the last 3 episodes makes no sense. Like he has been through worst. Why now?" @crazyforinfo asked.
Plenty of "Chicago P.D." fans opted to ignore their disappointment and thanked Soffer for his dedication to the series and praised his performance. Others hope to see him back down the line, hopefully reuniting with Hailey. A few fans also championed a spin-off with Jay in Bolivia, but we wouldn't encourage anyone to get their hopes up on that end.