‘Shiptober: Why a Chicago PD Upwater (Upton / Atwater) pairing should happen

Mrs. Carter: Is it too early to ‘ship Upwater on Chicago PD season 5?

If you were to answer this question with a “yes” we would certainly understand. After all, the characters of Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) and Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) have barely spent any time together at all, and we’re only two episodes into the season. Upton in particular is still a franchise newbie, having only debuted near the end of season 4.

Yet, here we are doing this anyway as a part of our month-long CarterMatt ‘Shiptober series, but we do have some legitimate reasons for thinking that this could work.

1. We already know Upton has a romantic future with somebody – That’s been teased here or there this season, and if she is to date someone from Intelligence there only are a few candidates. You could look towards Adam Ruzek or Jay Halstead if you wanted, but we don’t want the show to venture into love triangle territory with Ruzek (we know Burgess has another love interest right now, but still) and Jay is just coming off of wanting to propose to Lindsay. Meanwhile, the idea of Voight dating someone working under him is one of the most anti-Voight things ever and it would just be strange. As for Antonio, it’s also been confirmed that he and Brett are going to be spending some time together coming up.

2. Note that this isn’t just a process of elimination – We wanted to see an Upwater storyline before we even started to rule out other romantic candidates. There’s just something more organically interesting about the two of them. Atwater often needs more storylines than he has, and we’d especially love to see more of his romantic life. These two coming together would create a wide array of interesting stories, and wouldn’t just be treading down a road we’ve been down before on the show.

3. There could be some fun here – We know that both Spiridakos and Hawkins can do comedy (heck, LaRoyce is a comedian away from the show), so they could bring a little bit of lightness to their characters’ lives and to a show that can often get rather dark.

4. There are already ‘shippers out there – We’ve seen the tweets and the acknowledgement from the fan base that this is something that they’d like to see. Of course there’s never going to be a ‘ship that is universally loved by everyone but there’s a lot of early support here! If the show tried it we do think that there would be plenty of fans on board.

Should Upwater happen from your vantage point?

Let us know what you think at the moment in the attached comments! Also, be sure to check out some of the latest Chicago PD casting news if you missed it, or like us on Facebook to get news on this and some of the other shows we cover at the site. (Photo: NBC.)